Bella Germania ("Beautiful Germany" in Italian) is a 2019 German 3-part miniseries directed by Gregor Schnitzler, based on Daniel Speck's 2016 book of the same name.
[1] In Italy, the series was first shown on Rai 1 on 3–4 June 2019, edited into two 135-minute episodes, under the name "Volevamo andare lontano - Bella Germania" (loosely translated as "We wanted to get far away"), which was the original Italian title for the Daniel Speck's book.
[2] The series starts in Munich in 2018, when fashion designer Julia Becker (Natalia Belitski) is presenting her first very own collection.
At the lobby, when she is trying to gather herself, she is approached by an old man, Alexander Schlewitz (Joachim Bißmeier), who tells her he wants to speak to her father, Vincenzo Marconi.
Julia lather goes to visit her mother Tanja (Andrea Sawatzki), a journalist and political reports author for television.
During a test drive, Alexander discovers a design flaw on the vehicle - it tends to lurch badly in curves and even threatens to tip over.
He tells her that he has no family as his father died in the World War II Russian front and his mother and brothers were killed during the bombing of Dresden.
However, they're quickly brought back to earth when Giulietta tells him that she is engaged to Enzo (Deniz Arora), a co-worker at Iso.
One year after Alexander's visit, Giulietta is now the mother of Vincenzo (who, as said in Giovanni's photo album, was baptized on 22 August 1955), and has settled into her married life with Enzo and the child.
The confinement of the nuclear family and the red shoes, the only thing she has left from her time with Alexander, remind her that there could be another, a more fulfilling life.
In 1964, Giovanni returns to Italy to perform military service, and brings back for Giulietta a German sewing machine.
When Giulietta, Giovanni, Enzo and Vincenzo (Mika Ullritz as a 9-year old) visit the Iso factory, they discover Alexander there talking to Renzo Rivolta.
Four years later, in 1968, in the family's Sicilian village, Giovanni and Rosaria (Ana Sanchez as young adult) are getting married.
When Giulietta attempts to apologize, Enzo grabs her roughly, to which Vincenzo (played by Rafael Koussouris as a teenager) intervenes and pushes him off.
In 2018, Julia travels to Turin with her grand-uncle Giovanni to meet her father, Vincenzo (played by Stefan Kurt as an old man).
Giovanni still works at the Wholesale Market, but Giulietta then helps him set up his own greengrocer's store in Munich, and she does bookkeeping for him and in her spare time sews clothes.
In the letter, Giulietta finds two tickets for Rossini's Il turco in Italia at National Theatre Munich for 20 February 1969, and Alexander's phone number, causing Enzo to become jealous again.
Enzo, meanwhile, quits his job at the Wholesale Market and takes another one at Munich U-Bahn construction, after witnessing an ad in the streets.
However, as they drive on the narrow Alpine serpentine road, finally experiencing perfect happiness after a long time, they don't know that the vehicle's brake line is loose and the fluid is leaking.
He finally agrees to tell her the truth and takes her on a trip back to Munich across the Alps to meet up with Alexander, on the exact same route his parents travelled on 45 years earlier.
When Alexander hears the noise and tries to confront them with a poker, Vincenzo pulls a gun on him, but can't bring himself to shoot him, instead escaping in the car, almost running him over.
After they have a fight with their comrade Olaf (Ulrich Brandhoff) in a parking garage, Vincenzo and Tanja make love in their apartment.
However, as it is being raided by the police, they escape through the window, clad only in their underwear, and flee to Vincenzo's grandmother's home in Sicily.
In his jail cell, Vincenzo plants the acorn in a flower pot, over time the oak starts to grow.
After Vincenzo leaves the office, he saw another man, Bernd (Johannes Zirner) walk in and kiss Tanja and embrace Julia, causing him to lose it and rush back inside.
Alexander then explains that his late wife Marlena had confessed on her deathbed that she had manipulated the car he and Giulietta were travelling in back in 1973.
Vincenzo also seeks out Enzo (played by Walter Hess as an old man) in a park and apologizes to him for having blamed him for Giulietta's death 45 years ago.
The series concludes with Julia and her father Vincenzo sitting down under the oak tree in Olympiapark they planted back in 1982.