"Nowhere In Africa" (2001)

(Originally released as Nirgendwo in Afrika)

Starring: Juliane Kohler, Merab Ninidze, Sidede Onyulo, Matthias Habich, Lea Kurka, Karoline Eckertz

First, the lowdown: A German-Jewish family flee to Kenya before the start of WWII.

I’ve always found foreign movies about World War II more enlightening than American ones. Mostly because they tend to provide a more genuine perspective of what it was like to have the enemy quite literally at your doorstep. It’s something that a lot of people in the US tend to forget, we haven’t had to fight a war against foreign invaders on our own soil since the 19th century. The closest we’ve been was the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and that was only one attack and did not involve entrenched soldiers fighting in the streets of our cities.

Jettel is the wife of a well-off, but non-practicing, Jewish lawyer in Germany. Her husband, Walter, has emigrated to Rongai, a small community outside of Nairobi, Kenya. Sensing the growing climate of anti-Semitism in his native land, Walter has been working at a ranch to earn enough money to bring Jettel and their daughter, Regina, to live with him.

Upon arriving at the modest house, Jettel is horrified at the squalid conditions and subsistence living. But Regina looks at her new home with child-like wonderment. While her mother acts out in self-denial of their newfound hardship, Regina finds herself more and more drawn to dusky land and its people, especially to Owuor, the household cook.

As time draws on, Walter is further vindicated by his decision to move his family once he hears word of the Nazi government imprisoning Jews, a point that Jettel begrudgingly concedes. However, once war has broken out between Germany and England, Walter and Jettel find out that unlike their homeland, here in colonial Kenya they’re not seen as Jews, but as GERMANS and are rounded up for internment as such. (In an ironic sequence, we find that while the men are sent to a prison camp, the women are kept under house arrest in a luxury hotel.)

After convincing the English that they’re refugees from their own country, Jettel and Walter find new work at another farm while its owner is fighting for the British. And Jettel finds herself growing more and more content with her new home and its people as her daughter is.

It’s a movie of interesting contrasts, told through the eyes of Regina. Contrasts are a consistent theme from the beginning: a playful romp in the German snow cuts back and forth to Walter’s early battle with malaria in the sun-filled skies of Kenya. Even the individual character arcs provide a different form of disparity: Jettel initially resists the idea of living in Kenya and thinks that the situation in Germany has been blown out of proportion by her husband (an attitude that changes when Walter receives a letter containing news of his father’s death at the hands of the SS) but then finds herself horrified at the prospect of leaving the farm; Walter is aimless at first, until he is offered to help the British army. The only anchor is Regina, who loves her adopted country as only a child could.

Line of the movie: “One person always loves more. That's what makes it so difficult. And the one who loves more is vulnerable.”

Four and a half stars. Add salt to taste.