That was an excellent one.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

For unknown reason, I forced myself to watch this movie on TV although I usually prefer foreign movies with subtitles partly on the account of my earing impairment. So in this kind of mood, I was in for a surprise as I found myself quite overwhelmed by this beautiful movie. It does touch so many areas of our life and social environment and their dynamics. Its foundation, on a Jewish family regrouping in Africa to escape a bleak future under the Nazis regime, reminds us of what is now slowly slipping into history but was so real to our parents or grand parents and should not really be forgotten. It seems yet not every one estimated fully the extent of the menace, how could they? Just like "September 11" It was too big and impossible to be taken seriously. But the story goes much beyond this and actually one quote demonstrate it. "Hitler did not create antisemitism" how true even if it does not alter the facts. Yes I remember of Judeophobia, fighting in primary school, when calling names we sometimes used "dirty Jew" and it was with mixed feelings we became conscious of the impact of the holocaust. The film does not need to go too far in that direction, although it's always in the background, there is plenty more to deal with. The strained relationship of this couple, the culture clash with its prejudices and the dealing with unsympathetic white land owners. But in the midst of all this there is their charming daughter played by two different actress in such a way that it's difficult to believe as they look so alike. "Her" character is so interesting as it is detached from all the negatives of this dramatic situation, instead it flourishes from it, and warms your heart in the process. I'm not sure I was really taken by the beauty of the landscape here, for me to say so would not be right as I found the place dry and rugged and feel I have seen much nicer shots of Africa. But on the flip side I felt that being so it did not distract you from the human drama. "Do it"!

If Jettel Redich, a sophisticated, attractive and perhaps shallow woman with a small daughter, a loving husband and a warm, extended family, had had her way in 1938 she would not have left Germany to join her husband in East Afrika. Of course, if she hadn't she and her daughter, along with all her family, would have been killed in the German death camps three or four years later. Jettel (Julianne Kohl), her husband Walter (Merab Ninidze) and their daughter, Regina (Lea Kurka and then, older, Karoline Eckertz), are Jews. Walter, a prosperous lawyer and judge in Germany, could see what was happening. He managed to get an exit visa, went as a Jewish refuge to Kenya, and then sent for his family. Regina with help got exit visas, but only reluctantly. The other family members all believed their fellow Germans would come to their senses and the Hitler thing would pass. Nirgendwo in Afrika tells us what happened to Walter, Jettel and Regina. It's an absorbing story which, even in 141 minutes, tries to do too much. Even so, and even if nothing really seems deeply affecting and certainly not tragic, the Redich family and how they changed kept me watching. The movie is rambling but also often affecting. The best Walter could do was to hire on to run a failing cattle outpost. The land is dry and full of scrub. He writes to his wife asking her bring a number of practical things they will need. She, instead, brings an expensive ball gown. Their house is scarcely more than a large shack. Malaria is always a possibility. The native Kenyans look upon them as curiosities. Water has to be carried from a distant well. In the midst of all this we see three things. Walter knows that staying in Germany would have meant death for them. He's prepared to do what he must to make some sort of life where he is. Jettel is appalled by what she sees and faces. She longs for her family and for the life she had. There, she was married to a prosperous lawyer and judge. Here, she is married to a hired hand. Regina, about six years old, simply accepts everything. Soon she's playing with the native children and picking up their language. The family has a cook, a tall man named Owuor (Sidede Onyulo). Walter tries to deal with him respectfully. Jettel without thinking about it treats him as a servant. Regina as usual simply accepts him as a friend. To give you an idea of the tone of the movie, if Nirgendwo in Afrika were remade by Hollywood, the part of Owuor would undoubtedly be played by Morgan Freeman. In the course of the movie they make one good friend, a tough fellow Jew who left Germany in 1933. They are interred by the British as a possible threat when war comes in 1939, even though they are refugees from Nazi Germany. They eventually are released. Sexual dissatisfaction abounds. Walter finds employment on a better farm, he joins the British Army and is sent to Burma. Jettel learns how to run the farm and deal with the native workers. Regina grows into a unselfconscious child whose friends are all native children. She learns about being a Jew when she is sent to an English school in Nairobi where the anti-Semitism is more condescending than vicious. In a subtle way Caroline Link, the director, also lets us make our own discoveries regarding the treatment of Jews in Thirties Germany and the treatment of Africans by colonialists. By now we've seen Walter's and Jettel's marriage nearly break apart. We even experience locusts. We also see, gradually, how Walter for all his practicality yearns to return to Germany after the war. We see how Jettel has grown into a responsible, capable woman who has come to love where she is and hates the idea of returning. Regina, or course, simply has become a part of Africa and of the people she knows. Like the movie itself, the conclusion is not quite satisfying and not quite unhappy. The only serious reservation I have about the movie are the two instances of fairly explicit coupling involving Walter and Jettel. My objections have nothing to do with prudery, but with how sex is usually used to pander to the audience. In both scenes sexual intimacy is used to show us the longing and need for the kind of shared intimacy that includes but goes well beyond sexual need. The director chooses to show us so much skin, so many positions and so much perspiration that, in my view, the audience is simply encouraged to become voyeurs in the name of art. As with most dramas, the more explicit the sex we see, the more the story-line comes to a halt. Nirgendwo in Afrika won the 2003 Academy Award for best foreign language film. It is beautifully photographed.

I love foreign films as it is, but I thought this film "Nowhere in Africa" was really good. I found myself feeling just like the woman who left Germany (to escape) who then found herself in a foreign land of Africa to then find herself becoming apart of the country. I'm sure many people went through this, and it still amazes me that the Holocaust happened in this century. It really hasn't been THAT long ago. This movie doesn't focus on the Holocaust, it gives you a different angle from those who lived it in a different way. I thought the little girls attitude on life was great as well.I miss Owuor and his ways, I enjoyed watching him converse with anyone in the film.

Having recently done research on Grandparents who left Berlin in 1939 for exile in Denmark, I found this film relevant and moving at times. I remember my mother telling me about how my father reacted in horror when he received a letter telling of his mother's (another grandparent) abduction from Norway to Auschwitz. This reaction is mirrored poignantly in the film.There could be similar films about the many German Jews who escaped at the last moment to Shanghai, for instance. They ended in that foreign environment mainly because Hamburg, which coveted its semi-independence and kept a distance from the Nazis, had quasi-diplomatic relations with the Chinese port and obtained visas. As I recall, the family of former Treasury secretary Michael Blumenthal spent the war in Shanghai.Weaknesses of the film: The strange title. Nowhere ??? in Africa? In fact, the husband early on establishes roots in Africa, and by the end of the film the wife and daughter have deep roots there. Why belittle Kenya and its people? The hint of antisemitism among the British. Yes, the British have a tradition of antisemitism but nothing even close to the state-sponsored horror perpetrated by the Germans. The love triangle involving Susskind. Not needed, really. Enough else is going on.The wife willingly has sex to get the husband a job. Ouch. Another cliché we don't really need.The wife says she's pregnant. The husband merrily asks, Is it due to me? Ouch, ouch. Would have been nice twist if African cook were responsible. Anyway, the pregnancy is tossed in as some sort of cliché, the importance of which is not worth figuring out.The wife is a little too prissily German Jewish when she arrives in Kenya. By then, the Nazi horror was in full swing, and the blissful days eating Schlagsahne at the Konditorei were pretty much over. A sense of impending tragedy was foreign to only the most total twit, though many Germans of Jewish ancestry could not take the final step to leave the country they loved.Hearing Hitler speak on the radio, the wife early on feels comforted to being connected to Germany. Yeah, sure. That is totally removed from reality. Irresponsibly suggests that maybe German Jews were responsible for their tragedy.The Africans are too childlike, too noble, too subservient. There was African nationalism already in the 1930s.The husband returns in 1947 to be a judge in Wiesbaden. Highly unlikely. Virtually no Jews returned that early. The very great majority never returned. His return somehow lessens the horror of the Nazi years. The filmmaker seems to be trying to sugarcoat the real horror, much of it emanating from the true character of the Germans.Sorry, but in some ways the director treats the Africans of Kenya like the Nazis treated the Jews, as low-level outsiders. Would have been interesting to match newsreel footage on Nazi terror and horrors with movie's footage on Kenya animal sacrificae, to show that former is perverted, latter rooted in religion.Sort of a repellent and repulsive film on reflection. Excellent for portraying the perverted German psyche, however, as exhibited by the film maker. Tied for dishonor of being Worst Film on Holocaust Ever with "Sophie's Choice," another abomination. "Night and Fog" and "The Sorrow and the Pity" are among many worthy films on the Holocaust.