In 1960, Moreno observes a German family who, every summer, visits his father, Angelo, in their remote Italian village. In 2019, Ambra decides to repair a bicycle with her father, Moreno, and wonders: can regret be passed down in our genes?
Das Rad – the bicycle – took eight years to make and plan. It's the director's intimate, documentary reconstruction of the relationship between her family and that of Edmund, the German boy whose grandfather Angelo helped repair the bicycle he used to escape Germany in 1945.
DIRECTOR'S NOTE
Four years ago, I gave my father a diary and asked him to write down what he remembered about his father, Angelo,'s escape from Germany by bicycle in 1945. The diary quickly filled with drawings, notes, and scattered thoughts. From there, I began a journey of research to piece together the story of my grandfather and his friendship with Edmund, the German boy who helped him build the bicycle he used in his escape.
Analyzing the diary notes, one detail about the bicycle's reconstruction particularly struck me: The two friends had replaced the inner tube with cork stoppers, thus making the wheel very heavy but practically indestructible.
I decided to test this approach with my father and his brothers, asking them to rebuild a bicycle from scratch using the same method. During the reconstruction, the sharing of memories was intense, and the memory took on more precise and defined forms. Following this experience, I decided to contact Uwe, Edmund's son, and visit him. Uwe, to my great surprise, had collected a wealth of material about his family's travels in Italy over the years, including Super 8 videos, photographs, and letters.
Through the collected material, powerful and fragmentary at the same time, I tell the story of two encounters.
