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Caroline Link’s wonderful, woefully obscure Best Foreign Film winner is an entertaining story of the perils of wartime emigration. It hits hard right now, with our own immigration crackdown underway. A Jewish family smartly escapes Nazi Germany at the 11th hour, only to find themselves imprisoned in detention camps by the British — who ironically consider them dangerous enemy aliens. The show is a glorious growing-up tale for a German tot transplanted to Kenya, and becomes an edgy romantic story when the mother repurposes her amorous needs to help rescue her family.

Nowhere in Africa

Blu-ray

Kino Lorber / Zeitgeist

20019 / Color / 2:40 widescreen / 141 min. / Nirgendwo in Afrika / Street Date February 27, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 34.95

Starring Merab Ninidze, Juliane Köhler, Lea Kurka, Karoline Eckertz, Sidede Onyulo, Matthias Habich, Herbert Knaup

Cinematography Gernot Roll

Production Designer Susann Bieling, Uwe Szielasko

Film Editor Patricia Rommel

Original Music Niki Reiser, Jochen Schmidt-Hambrock

Written by Caroline...

One word to describe this film: excellent! This film about a secular-minded Jewish family leaving Germany and finding home in Kenya during the Second World War had made me gone through all kinds of emotions. In fact, who would have thought that a "family" film can efficiently warm your heart?

By 1937, Adolf Hitler, the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nsdap), has been ruling Germany as a dictator since 1933. Obviously, his political party openly and aggressively promoted hatred towards Jewish people. Hence, the growing fear within the German Jewish community at that time. Because he sees something worse coming for the Jews, Walter Redlich (Merab Ninidze), a former lawyer, writes a letter from Kenya to his wife, Jettel (Juliane Köhler), and their daughter Regina (Lea Kurka as the young/Karoline Eckertz as the older) who are both still living in Breslau, Germany. Besides, in his letter, Walter convinces...