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"Nowhere in Africa"
By Steve Parish, The Church of England Newspaper
Nowhere in Africa, winner of the Oscar for best foreign language film, tells the story of a German Jewish family, escaping the Nazis to a farm in Kenya where her father is already working. Regina Redlich is a young girl when the story begins, and the film follows her through childhood — and an almost seamless change of actor — in exploring a new life and observing her parents’ delicate relationship.
Regina (played by Lea Kurka and Karoline Eckertz) is based on Stefanie Zweig, whose autobiographical novel was the basis for writer-director Caroline Link’s film. Only the names have been changed.
Her father Walter (Merab Ninidze) was a lawyer in Germany, and as a farm manager had a lot to learn. When Regina and her mother Jettel (Juliane Köhler) join him, there are tensions as Jettel struggles with loss of social status as well as being planted in an alien land, expecting her cook to learn German while Swahili remains a mystery to her.
But under the tutelage of the cook, Owuor (Sidede Onyulo), Regina is happily imbibing the native culture and language; while her mother plants seed potatoes in the barren earth, Regina is planting her bare feet firmly in the dust of Africa. Jettel’s rebellion at their situation is silenced only by news of Kristallnacht.
Unable to contemplate a return to Germany, and then interned by the British once the war breaks out, they have little choice over their "second life". There is a peculiar delight in Jettel’s detention, among the sophisticated surroundings of the Norfolk Hotel, where — when an English officer protests at the lavish meal for enemy aliens — the head waiter says "These are our standards and the management is not willing to compromise".
As the war progresses, the undercurrents of prejudice work several ways as Jettel returns to farming and Walter is released to fight for the Allies, while Regina is sent to an English boarding school. Soon Wordsworth and Shakespeare (and a love poem by Louise Chandler Morton) compete with Heinrich Heine’s Loreleyleid for the literary aspirations in the family.
The war over, they face the tension of staying in Kenya or returning to help remake their homeland. Germany is seen in sombre tones before the war and in monochrome newsreel footage after the war; the contrast with the colours of Africa, accompanied by Niki Reiser’s haunting and powerful score, is perhaps over-deliberate.
But there is no need to over-dramatise the story, and the romantic excursions — with an echo of Walkabout as Regina flirts with an African boy — carry conviction even if fictitious. Perhaps understating the reality for German-speakers in Kenya’s white highlands, the story unfolds in its own time, and often it’s Owuor, happily advising the bwana and memsahib with his simple wisdom, who carries the day, and the film.
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