Rating: 
Summary: Exceptional and Memorable Work of Cinematography....
Review: First movie that I have seen in quite awhile that left very impressionable and positive images in my mind, for many days after the initial viewing.
Lots of dedication, committment and a tolerance to another culture is clearly shown in this movie....excellant crew and list of actors and actresses!
Rating:
Summary: A Film About The Value Of Differences - Excellent!
Review: "Nowhere In Africa" follows a young assimilated German-Jewish family from the time they flee Nazi Germany in 1938 and emigrate to Africa until the end of WWII. This moving film is adapted from Stefanie Zweig's autobiographical novel and deals more with the struggle to begin a new life in a very foreign land than with the war going on back in Europe.
Walter Redlich, (Merab Ninidze), a lawyer living in Breslau, Germany, sensed the dark future for Jews in the Third Reich and left to find work in Kenya before 1938. He sent for his wife Jettel, (Juliane Köhler) and young daughter Regina, (beautifully played by both Lea Kurka, as a preschooler and Karoline Eckertz, as an adolescent), as soon as he was settled as a farm manager in Rongai, Africa. Jettel was ambivalent about leaving her mother, in-laws, prosperous life and the culture and language she loved. She had been brought up to think of herself as German first, and then as Jewish. Like many others, she did not really believe that Hitler would remain in power for long. The Redlichs seemed to have had a somewhat superficial relationship; one that had never been stressed with problems or inconveniences. Her beloved father-in-law told Jettel, before she departed, that in a marriage, "usually one person loves more than the other." He asked her to keep the family together.
Jettel and Regina arrive to find a stark, dry land. Walter had been sick with malaria. His African cook, Owour, (Sidede Onyulo), cared for him and got him back on his feet in time for his family's arrival. He was not prepared for his wife's coldness or her aversion to the new country. Instead of bringing a refrigerator with her, as her husband had written and asked, Jettel used the money to buy an expensive gown. Also packed, in the limited amount of luggage she was allowed to remove from Germany, were fine china dishes and knickknacks. Young Regina, however, is thrilled to see her father. She immediately makes friends with Owour and takes to her new home as if she had been born there. Regina had always been a meek and frightened child, as a result of frequent harassment in Germany. Her fears leave her quickly in this sun-filled country where she begins to run wild with the native children and learn a new culture and language. The conflict between her parents continues to grow. Jettel does not see the big picture. Rather than be thankful that her family was one of the very few able to escape Germany, she is resentful of their shabby life and seems to loose respect for Walter now that he is no longer a lawyer. She makes it very clear that she is unhappy.
Photographer Gernot Roll captures the beauty of the land, with its sweeping savannas, the sacred Mt. Kenya overlooking the small homestead, shots of African ceremonies and dances, children playing, and wonderful close-ups of a hoard of locusts
attacking crops of corn.
The terrible stress of losing one's culture, of always being different, is what is emphasized most by director Caroline Link. As Jettel says to her daughter, "Germany is a place where differences are bad, in Africa differences are good. I learned here how valuable differences are."
The movie is somewhat flawed. I think that Regina would have made a much better main character than her mother. It is difficult to like Jettel, as the spoiled, selfish daughter/wife/mother who refuses to adapt. And there is little chemistry between husband and wife, although they make an extraordinarily attractive couple. Overall, however, "Nowhere In Africa" definitely deserves 4 stars. It won various awards in Germany and was that country's Oscar nomination in 2002.
JANA
Rating: 
Summary: Culture Shock
Review: This very fine film about a family (man, wife and daughter) of German Jews who escape the Holocaust by emigrating to Africa, wonderfully evokes the shock of their being thrust into an alien land and culture and their various responses to and difficulties adjusting to the strangeness of it all.Beautifully filmed, with some of the best views of that landscape since Out of Africa, these are complex people with complicated responses to their situation. The father, a lawyer, resents having to be a hired hand on English-owned Kenyan farms and ranches. His wife hates the loss of wealth, privelege and the hardships of their new circumstances. They both miss and worry about the families left behind in Germany. Meanwhile, their young daughter, with the flexibility and adaptability of a child, takes to the people and the land right away and becomes more African than European in her sensiblity. Played with subtlety and restraint, the emotions and conflicts generated within and without the marriage are complicated and ring true. For that fact, the whole film rings true and creates its truths by accumulation of detail and the gradual revealing of character. We come to know and understand these complicated people. Well worthwhile, this is fine work in all departments. I don't know if it's a classic, but it is at least 4-1/2 stars.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful film
Review: Simply put, NOWHERE IN AFRICA is a beautiful, beguiling film that explores the essence of what is "home". The film begins in the snows of Germany in 1938. Jettel Redlich (Juliane Kohler) and her 4-year old daughter are out for a day of sledding. Amidst the frolic, each is rudely knocked to the ground by anonymous fellow citizens. The Redlichs, you see, are Jews in Hitler's Third Reich. Having suspected the direction that National Socialist anti-Semitism will take, Jettel's husband, Walter (Merab Ninidze), had previously given up his law practice and gone to Kenya to prepare ground for the family's emigration. He's gotten work as the range manager on a drought-plagued cattle farm. Despite the hardships, Walter writes to Jettel to come immediately with Regina and bring only the essentials and/or whatever the Nazis will allow them to carry. So, several months before Kristalnacht, mother and daughter take ship from Europe, leaving both sets of grandparents behind to their wartime fates. Depicting a span of nine years and "told" through Regina's eyes, NOWHERE IN AFRICA examines the response of each Redlich to immersion in a vastly different physical environment and culture. Walter, the realist, embraces his new circumstances as the key to survival, even as his fortunes change multiple times over the course of the film. Jettel, arriving in Kenya a pampered, upper-middle class wife, learns the hard way. She's initially horrified by the heat, dust, dryness, monotonous diet, local customs, lack of genteel amenities, and the necessity of having to interact with native Blacks. Regina (Lea Kurka and Karoline Eckertz) copes the best of all, beginning with her immediate attachment to the family's congenial native cook, Owour, marvelously played by Sidede Onyulo. Of the three, the daughter becomes the most Africanized. After nine years, after having endured a roller coaster of experiences and a sometimes troubled marriage, Walter and Jettel must decide whether or not to return themselves and Regina to a defeated and devastated homeland. Do they owe anything to the country that rejected them and liquidated their relatives? Every aspect of NOWHERE IN AFRICA can be described by a superlative. It's a sedately paced love affair with Africa in all of its seductiveness. Even locusts play a part. In the very last scene, perhaps Jettel and the viewer realize that "going home again" may not be an option when the realm of the heart has shifted forever.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully Rendered, Organically Produced
Review: Other reviews give you synopsis. This review is more about the effect of the film on me, and why I think I was so moved by it. This is a love story, first, as the director and actors state in the special features. It is that. The story of a married couple who find that they have little really in common with one another, once taken out of their normal environment. It is the struggle to be oneself, yet be a couple, when all is said and done. However, it is the daughter and the Kenyan cook who create a magic that I haven't seen written in reviews. The daughter quickly adapts to the strange and different life in Kenya, as well as the English schooling. She lives in three worlds, easily. The cook is a wise man, who brings all of the characters together, as if he is the quiet sounding board for all. The interview, in Special Features, with the gentleman who plays the cook is fascinating, as he describes the difference between working with American crews and the German crew for this film, and it helped me to understand why I reacted so deeply to the script and the actors. It was how the Germans built the film around the environment and people rather than changing it to suit their own notions. Based on a true story, by the daughter, of her family's survival and re-invention through intense change and pain. This is not a depressing movie. This is an uplifting one. This is a story about relationships. About diversity. About change and how people adapt. About love for human beings, as well as environment. One of the best films I've ever seen.
Rating:
Summary: German Yes, English No.
Review: This was an excellent film. It didn't seem to run long as some reviewed. So many events occurred in the film, I thought more time went by than actually did. This film would have received 5 stars, but Amazon has it listed as having both English and German versions on the disc. It only has German with English subtitles. Fortunately I understand German, so this did not deter from the film.
Rating:
Summary: CAPTIVATING CHRONICLE OF ESCAPE IN VISUALLY GORGEOUS KENYA
Review: Most World War movies veer around the gritty theme of the Holocaust and how many people perished under the heinous regime. Some movies such as "Sophie's Choice" or "Nowhere in Africa" bring out the other aspect -â€" people who escaped one horror, but underwent prejudiced treatment or disintegration after immigration to other countries. This film chronicles a German family that sought refuge in the idyllic arms of Kenya. Unlike the eulogistic "Pianist" it actively ventures into the wilds to struggle with the growing awareness of the Holocaust's terrible toll around the world. Locusts, sacrificial lambs, etc lend the film its uncompromisingly graphic metaphors for the exacting beauty and danger of Africa. Apart from the breathtaking vistas of grassland Kenya, the best thing about the movie is that like a good John Irving novel, it's not made up of heroes and villains. It is an unfolding narrative of human beings who face hardships and evolve through them. This requires a feat of casting that the film manages to accomplish rather convincingly (e.g., the daughter in the family is an 8-year old for a part of the movie, then an adoloscent in the latter half.) Quick editing cuts and a swift development of a multi-faceted story, laced with a riveting score of African music, demands the audience's attention from the first frame and holds it right until the credits. Some anti-Semitic words of the headmaster at the daughter's boarding school, or some pithy dialog such as "We are Jews even if that doesn't mean much to you", dent the script's eloquent but believable language. Yet, overall, "Nowhere in Africa" is a subtle tale of love and belonging couched in the times of war -- that state of humanity that continues to fascinate yet horrify us. A highly recommended gem of film.
Rating:
Summary: 1930s Kenya is a safe haven and a place of culture clashes
Review: This is the story of a Jewish family fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s. They go to Kenya, a place as foreign to them as another world. However, at least they are safe. The father, played by Merab Ninidze, was a former lawyer. Now he runs a farm in a rather desolate area. He suffers from Malaria and is nursed to health by an African cook, played by Sidede Onyulo who teaches him to speak Swahili. When the Jewish man's wife and daughter arrive, there is a lot of adjusting to do, especially for the wife, played by Juliane Kohler, who spends her last money before the trip on a ball gown. The little girl, who is about 6, is played by Lea Kurka. She's the first one to adjust and easily makes friends with the village children. That's just the outline of the story however, which is told against the backdrop of historical events. When war is declared, the family is now considered German by the English authorities ruling Kenya and put in a rather luxurious detention for a while. The marriage is troubled, the daughter is sent to an English school. The family learns what it is to be different. And yet, they grow to love their new home. There are serious questions to decide when the war ends. I found this film fascinating, especially in the parts where there were culture clashes. It was filmed in German, with a bit of Swahili and English. This added to its authenticity. I don't know if this was a true story or not, but it sure seemed real to me. Definitely recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Heartfelt cinema
Review: "Nowhere In Africa" deservingly won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film of 2002. Unfortunately, this is also one of the most underrated movies of 2002. This german film fills the audience with intense heartfelt emotion that one rarely experiences in film. The screenplay writer is not the only person to credit. The producer, the director, and especially the actors add their own finishes to this masterpiece. Their blood, sweat, and tears fill the whole movie screen. It desplicts the realities and the fears of german living during World War II, proving that the crew broadly researched their material. It desplicts more than the reactions of Hitler's behavior. It also represents loneliness, longing, love, and being far away from home and family. Such movie virtues make "Nowhere In Africa" one of the best two hours of viewing of 2002. After watching this, one will feel enlightened. Few modern-day movies have such impact and such quality. This will make "Nowhere In Africa" a classic in the following years to come.
Rating:
Summary: A Very Moving and Artfully Made Film
Review: NOWHERE IN AFRICA certainly deserves the Academy Award for Foreign Film 2002 it won. This is an epic story about the human condition that transcends even the semibiographical time it addresses. In short, a happy and well-to-do German family (who happen to be Jewish, mostly in name only) 'escape' to Africa in 1938 just as Hitler is beginning to unfurl his blanket of the Holocaust. The father has proceeded the mother and daughter to find a place to live and a means of support. He is aided (importantly) by a native cook named Owuor (the symbol of universal mankind and spirit) in creating a home away from Germany. The basic theme of the story is how the transplanted Germans adjust to their new home, how the mother (not at all happy about giving up the good life in Germany to dwell among the natives whom she considers inferior people) attempts to inculcate her young daughter on how to stay separate from these 'dirty,untrustworthy' lower caste types. The daughter immediately relates to the gentle Owuor and falls in love with her new life. Matters drive husband and wife apart, they eventually are 'detained' (by the British who see them as Germans not unlike what the US did to the Japanese in WW II)in a camp which for all the world looks like a luxury hotel - without a sense of home. The husband joins the military and eventually the family moves back to their litlle home in the wilderness, survive locusts and famine, and through many trials find each other again. The bite to this film comes mostly from the mother's attitutde towards the Africans: it mirrors the attitude of the Nazis toward the Jews in Germany. How that bite is resolved contains some of the more sensitive movie making in a long time. The cast is uniformly excellent: Juliane Kohler and Merab Ninidje as the parents, Sidede Onyulo as Owuor, and the two actors who share the role of Regina the daughter - Lea Kurka and Karoline Eckertz. The film is tightly and lovingly directed by Caroline Link, making the most of the vastness and beauty of Kenya. Truly a film to see and see again. In German and African languages with excellent subtitles.
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