“This wasn’t just the old man who limped everywhere. The more I learned about my grandfather, the more I felt distant from him,” said Mark Pedri. In his expedition-based documentary “Dear Sirs,” director Mark Pedri and his wife, producer Carrie McCarthy, embarked on a journey to discover his Italian American grandfather Silvio Pedri’s past as a soldier during World War II.

Upon coming across a sharp army knife hidden in Silvio Pedri’s old bedroom in Wyoming, the Pedri couple decided to piece together his adventures as a soldier through piles of letters, black and white photographs, forgotten artifacts and military medals, and a spontaneous bicycle journey across Europe.