Nowhere in Africa
Released 2001
Stars Juliane Kohler, Merab Ninidze, Lea Kurka, Matthias Habich, Sidede Onyulo,
Karoline Eckertz
Directed by Caroline Link
The latest film from director Caroline Link follows a young Jewish family from Germany to Kenya as they flee the Nazi regime at the onset of World War II. Far from being yet another war epic, this adaptation of Stefanie Zweig's autobiographical novel deals primarily with the trials and triumphs of starting a new life in a foreign land. As young Regina (played by Lea Kurka and Karoline Eckertz) grows up in the company of the Pokot tribe, her parents Jettel (Juliane Köhler) and Walter (Merab Ninidze) must learn to cope with their waning love for one another and the fact that they may never see their families again.
Summary by Amit Asaravala
Filming personal memoirs is tricky, because the end result may be like watching
someone else's vacation videos. There are different ways to make it interesting for other
people, but this movie failed to do that for me. Its approach was to tell a dramatic story
that I found compelling, but the parents were not compelling characters. Since they were
based on real people, there's only so much they could do with them while trying to remain
close to the truth, and that was the problem. I found Regina's mother, Jettel, completely
despicable, but it would have helped if the movie had let us understand why her father
continued to fight for her despite her casual affairs and her passive aggressive anger.
It's probably because Regina didn't know the reasons herself, but that's where a film
needs to go beyond the facts. It needs to postulate. Otherwise we end up wandering through
someone else's memories without context, and it's no fun looking through someone else's
family photo album filled with people we don't know. --Bill Alward, December 26, 2003