Nowhere In Africa

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I like films best when I become quickly ensnared in the rhythm of their story. Nowhere In Africa promptly becomes somewhere in your heart. The story of German-Jewish immigrants escaping the horrors of the impending holocaust, to a remote part of Kenya, is told in soft beats of memory by the one person who loves this adventure from beginning to end.

Regina Redlich (played deftly by both Lea Kurka and later by Karoline Eckertz) finds herself transported to a strange land but refuses to be a stranger for long in her new home. While her parents struggle to adapt to their new station in life, Regina takes to Africa and it’s people with the determined energy a five-year-old would have entering the gates of Disneyland. The memories of Regina’s Africa are beautifully displayed in both photography and story, and if I wanted anything more from this film it would have been more of this child’s Tom Sawyer lifestyle.

As prominent as their hard-scrabble lifestyle is, there is also constant tension between Jettel (Juliane Kohler) her mother and Walter (Merab Ninidze) her father. The enormous lifestyle change displays well the fact that as one gets older it’s not just one’s toes that become harder to touch. The inability of her parents to be as flexible as their daughter strains the family almost beyond it’s limits.

Running time: 138 minutes. No MPAA rating. In German with English subtitles. Written and directed by Caroline Link. Based on a novel by Stefanie Zweig.