HERE

In Caroline Link’s sweeping NOWHERE IN AFRICA (2001), a family is nearly lost when, as a necessity of survival, it must relocate and reconfigure itself—in Kenya.

Again, the German obsession with man’s reaction to another man’s borders is primary here. The film’s title is ironic, referring to the family matriarch’s “sensation that she is trapped in ‘nowhere’ — something she comes to understand is wrong.” (Michael Wilmington)

In fact, the relocated German Jewish family finds itself in Africa, even as it faces “jarring cultural and economic shocks, domestic strife, and the pain of exile.” (Stephen Holden)

NOWHERE is gorgeously photographed, romantic, and deftly directed. In this regard, the film ingratiates itself to an international (re: Hollywood) audience. Yet it maintains a strong sense of its own Germanity.

NOWHERE is a film that puts its exiled family back together, better. Stronger. Made so by the loving kindness of otherwise exotic strangers.