Pizza Colonia (1991)

The hot-blooded Italian Francesco, who always tries to please everyone and has quite a success story to his name, came to Germany with his wife Severina and his family around thirty years ago. In Cologne, in the Rhineland, he runs the Italian restaurant “Ristorante Francesco” and has adapted well to the local mentality. His children are now grown up and hardly speak any Italian. But there are problems all around him: his daughter Rita Serboli is about to marry Alfred Zach, the grandson of the old, all-powerful Cologne brewery owner of the same name and co-owner of the restaurant, and open a restaurant of her own. Francesco’s best friend, Karlheinz Pütz, is in the midst of serious marital problems, and now old Massimo, the family’s Mafia-style protector and financier, is announcing a visit to “Germania” from Italy to make an offer that cannot be refused … Then, as if things weren’t bad enough, Francesco’s wife discovers that he has been cheating on her for 18 years with a “Tedesca”—Hilde Schmitz, a native-born Cologner and kiosk owner—and has even fathered a wayward son with her, who runs a thriving trade in stolen car radios. Francesco’s whole life’s work in Germany threatens to come crashing down around him. He sees escape as his only salvation. To leave the brewing German-Italian chaos behind, Francesco grabs Hilde and heads back, following the trails of the past, to the familiar San Giorgio, the paradise of his southern Italian childhood. But even there, the world is no longer as it was half a century ago, and every local can tell that this strange woman at his side is hardly his Severina …