Nowhere in Africa

Director: Caroline Link
(2001)

In this winner of the 2002 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, based on Stefanie Zweig’s novel, a Jewish family flees Nazi ridden Germany in 1938 for a remote Kenyan farm. Once in the exotic new country, the young married couple and their daughter struggle to face the challenges of their new surroundings and deal with the stresses and complications that arise both in their lives and in Africa. Gorgeously photographed and directed with sensitivity and compassion, this moving epic is inspiring in both its impressive size and scope which rivals the work of Anthony Minghella, as well as the fact that it was helmed by a German woman who not only directed the feature but wrote its incredible screenplay, proving that women can make global epics on an Oscar worthy scale. The cast is exceptional, most notably the beautiful Merab Ninidze as the gentle patriarch who is at once a romantic idealist and realist in facing their new situation and trying his hardest to hold the family together. This breathtaking, lyrical and authentically touching film offers something for everyone— it’s foreign filmmaking at its very best.