Petra Biondina Volpe
Alice and Peter are celebrating their retirement and are looking forward to a new phase in their lives. Then Alice finds out that her best friend Magalie, who dies completely unexpectedly, had been having an affair in France for 15 years. The confrontation with the finiteness of life plunges Peter into an existential crisis: to the great chagrin of Alice, who is a bon vivant, he becomes a total health fanatic. When Peter invites Heinz, Magalie's widowed husband, to join him on a cruise, which Alice hopes will breathe new life into a marriage, their harmonious retirement is over.
1945 Zero hour. Europe is reduced to rubble. Thirty million displaced and uprooted people. At the heart of this ravaged continent lies Switzerland. This small neutral country, which has been all but spared by the war, becomes a hub for Nazi war criminals, Allied Secret Services and Holocaust survivors.
Nora is a young housewife and mother, living in a quaint little village with her husband and their two sons. The Swiss countryside is untouched by the major social upheavals the movement of 1968 has brought about. Nora’s life is not affected either; she is a quiet person who is liked by everybody – until she starts to publicly fight for women’s suffrage, which the men are due to vote on in a ballot on February 7, 1971.
Take a culinary journey through the Abruzzo region of Italy, known as the “greenest region of Europe,” with two of Detroit’s finest chefs. When Luciano DelSignore of Southfield’s Bacco Ristorante returns home for his cousin’s wedding and to cook for his family, he recalls what made him fall in love with the farm-to-table simplicity of Abruzzo culture. Along for the ride is James Rigato, DelSignore’s mentee and chef at renowned eateries The Root and Mabel Gray.
Heidi, is an eight-year-old Swiss orphan who is given by her aunt to her mountain-dwelling grandfather. She is then stolen back by her aunt from her grandfather to live in the wealthy Sesemann household in Frankfurt, Germany as a companion to Klara, a sheltered, disabled girl in a wheelchair. Heidi is unhappy but makes the best of the situation, always longing for her grandfather.
André, 55, lives with his mother Louise, 80, and leads an unspectacular life. He works as a taxi driver while the elderly diva dreams of bygone days as an actress in Hollywood. One day the charismatic Bill, 50, an American, turns up on their doorstep - a stranger who will soon turn their quiet life upside down.
An affluent city is covered in snow, all seems perfect – on the surface. Divorcé Rolf is doing his best to rebuild his relationship with his daughter. Pregnant Lena appears to be living a faultless family life with her husband and son. Social worker Judith has a tough job and escapes it through her fantasies, whilst widowed Maria has finally built up the courage to invite her male acquaintance to a romantic dinner. In the course of one day, all of them will cross paths with the Bulgarian Mia, who works in the red-light trade and their seemingly perfect lives will never be the same…
Leni, in her mid-fifties, runs the local bakery with her son in a small Swiss town. When she falls in love with a much younger Argentinean dance teacher, her world is turned upside down.
Just as Lolo, a gay Italian-Secondo, is getting ready to spend a romantic evening with his lover, his Italian Nonna makes an unexpected appearance.
