Product: Nowhere in Africa (2003)
Rating: 5.0
A German Family With Nowhere To Go!
There have been so many movies made about the persecution of the Jews in Germany, but I have never seen one like this that deals with how some of them escaped Germany. Walter, Jettel, and their young daughter Regina travel to Nairobi in the early thirties. Walter, a former judge, is forced to take a job as a farm laborer working for a British landowner. At this time during the Third Reich, all Jews were unable to work at their professions. Jettel, used to a more glamorous life of dinner parties, nice clothes, and servants, is forced to live in a country where there is a shortage of not only these things, but simple elements, like water. As the war progresses, this family is now considered the enemy, and for a time Walter is incarcerated in a British prison camp. Their luck changes due to intervention by a British officer who is more than an admirer of the lovely Jettel! Walter becomes the manager of a farm of the landowner who is involved in the war. The member of the family who quickly picks up the language and culture of the natives is Regina. Eventually the family grows to love the people and the country but another wrench is thrown into the whole picture, and it is the ending of the war. Does the family go back to a country that once rejected them and is now in ruins? Or should they stay and make a new life in a place that also has a lot of unknowns? I think that all of the actors played their roles very well, including the native actors who spoke in their own language. The rest of the film was done in German, some parts in English, and it was even more amazing that the young actress who played Regina mastered the native tongue of Kenya.