NOWHERE IN AFRICA is the story of a Jewish family who escape Nazi Germany at the last opportunity to live on a farm in remote Kenya. It charts the contrasting attitudes of Regina and her parents towards their new life and the poverty and isolation of their new home. DVD extras include an interview with the author of NOWHERE IN .. Read more
| Starring | Juliane Kohler, Merab Ninidze, Matthias Habich |
|---|---|
| Director | Caroline Link |
| Genres | Drama, World Cinema |
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NOWHERE IN AFRICA is the story of a Jewish family who escape Nazi Germany at the last opportunity to live on a farm in remote Kenya. It charts the contrasting attitudes of Regina and her parents towards their new life and the poverty and isolation of their new home. DVD extras include an interview with the author of NOWHERE IN AFRICA, Stefanie Zweig.
| Starring | Juliane Kohler, Merab Ninidze, Matthias Habich |
|---|---|
| Director | Caroline Link |
| Studio | OPTIMUM HOME ENTERTAINMENT |
| Run time | DVD: 2 hrs 21 mins |
| Certificate | |
| Genres | Drama, World Cinema |
| Language | DVD: German |
| Subtitles | DVD: English |
| Released | DVD: 29 Sep 2003 Production year: 2001 |
| Format | DVD |
Writer/director Caroline Link has composed a love letter to Africa with this visually stunning and immaculately acted drama. Based on the autobiographical novel by Stefanie Zweig, it's the emotional tale of a family of German-Jewish refugees who settle on a remote farm in Kenya in 1938. Against a landscape that can be cruel as well as beautiful, Jettel and Walter Redlich (Juliane Köhler and Merab Ninidze), and their five-year-old daughter Regina, struggle to adjust and survive. The winner of this year's Oscar for best foreign language film, Link's drama delivers fresh insight into the Jewish experience of that era. Despite the setting, it's very much a Holocaust story, for no matter where the Redlichs go, prejudice and intolerance are always bubbling beneath the surface. However, this is no tragedy, nor are its characters victims — they are rounded individuals who provide a striking, and often ironic, portrait of the tenacity of the human spirit.
Engaging account of an unlooked-for colonial adventure, as seen through the eyes of a young girl, and encompassiing marital problems and homesickness along the way.
One cannot escape the basic concept similarities between this film and the Redford/Streep classic OUT OF AFRICA. However, this beautifully shot Best Foreign Film Oscar winner shows the tribulations of an exiled German Jewish family treated (quite well) as aliens by the British authorities in Kenya during the World War II. It is a tad long and slowly paced but very well acted with leading characters not always portrayed too kindly.
This is a fantastic film. Based on the life of a non-practising jewish family with the foresight to leave germany before the war. Watching the mother and wife mature through later years, and her realisation of materialism is superb. A film of growth and intergrity, acceptance of cultures and change. A war story with a difference, as the family grow together by listening and learning of the war from afar.