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Rating: When threatened, nothing can stop a man. When death looms, the survival instinct takes over and surpasses every other vital instinct. Faced with Nazi persecution, every Jew of the time must have felt an inhuman sense of repulsion, so much so that many of them fled Germany and sought refuge in the darkest corners of the globe to escape death.
"Nowhere in Africa" tells us the story of a Jewish family that escaped the Holocaust thanks to the difficult decision to leave their country and head to Africa, where Walter works for a local farmer and wants his wife and daughter, still residing in Germany, to join him in Kenya. Once in the dark continent, the three Jews are threatened by a life that doesn't belong to them and are constantly confused by the British, who consider the Germans hostile.
"Nowhere in Africa" represents in my opinion the pinnacle of Caroline Link, a German director who is unknown to most of the public, but who had already demonstrated her excellent filmmaking skills with Beyond Silence. The film in question, released in theaters in 2001, is a story of great emotional impact that tells us about the difficulties related to diversity. After all, it has always been this way. We are all different, we need to acknowledge that. But unfortunately, we all know what happened in the 30s/40s in Germany (and in other nations as well) so it's tiresome to talk about it again, especially because I don't have the adequate knowledge to do so. Link's film with a good dose of criticism lets us glimpse diversity in its different forms. Those like Walter who can adapt to the hard and "sandy" life of Africa will end up having doubts about his wife, who is herself unable to live in the new reality and eventually deeply believes in the traditions of the local populations. A separate discussion should be made for Regina, the daughter of the two, who, as a defenseless little girl, will be able to understand life's mechanisms better than anyone else, without looking at the different color of the new people. As she grows up, she finds herself comfortable both with the indigenous people of Kenya and with the local British reality.
In a new scenario for everyone, the two adults, also beset by the destabilizing news arriving from Germany about the deportations, see their relationship crumble while young Regina learns customs and traditions. A situation that, however, inevitably ends up uniting the souls and efforts of everyone, in a crescendo of poetic cinematic inventiveness.
A very intimate film, excellently acted, which manages to tackle very complex themes without delving too much into specifics, allowing viewers to interpret the film’s themes in their way. Link has achieved telling History through the family microcosm, creating a highly intense film.
Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2003.
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