It is 1938, and the Redlich family — German-Jewish — has fled to Kenya. They don't know yet that they will stay for seven years. Caroline Link's 2001 film, winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, follows the family through the war years on a remote farm — Walter, the father, adjusting to the work; Jettel, the wife, resisting everything; and Regina, their daughter, falling in love with Africa with the complete openness of a child who doesn't know she's supposed to feel like an outsider.
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For German students, the film is extraordinary: German and English and Swahili exist in the same scenes, and the family's relationship to each language marks their different relationships to their exile. Walter speaks German with his wife and English with the farm staff; Regina learns Swahili from Owuor; Jettel refuses both languages until she can't. The film makes language itself a measure of how each character deals with displacement.
Key themes:
- Exile and adaptation — The family members adapt at completely different speeds and in completely different ways. Ask: Wie passt sich jedes Familienmitglied an das Leben in Kenia an? And: Who adapts best, and why?
- What we carry — Jettel brings a dress she can't wear in Africa. Walter brings his law books. Ask: Was versuchen die Redlichs mit nach Kenia zu bringen? What does what they bring tell us about who they are?
- Home and belonging — By the end, Germany is no longer home. Africa is not quite home either. Ask: Wo ist die Heimat der Familie Redlich nach dem Krieg? Is there an answer?
Scene to use: Regina's first conversation with Owuor — the farm's Kenyan cook and her eventual friend — conducted partly in German, partly in Swahili, partly through gesture. The scene models language acquisition as it actually happens: through necessity, presence, and the willingness to be wrong. Ask: Wie lernen Regina und Owuor miteinander zu kommunizieren? Students identify the strategies they use.
Low-prep classroom activity: Students write a brief letter in German from Jettel to her sister in Germany — in the second year, when things are harder but she's starting to manage. She must describe one thing she has accepted, one thing she still can't, and one thing she misses that she didn't expect to miss. Past and present tense mixed, and the specific German of someone performing adjustment while not quite believing it.
The full German lesson plan for Nirgendwo in Afrika is ready at filmarobics.com/products/nirgendwo-in-afrika — $29.95.
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Students walk away from Nirgendwo in Afrika having heard German carry exile across three languages — and having understood that home is not where you're from but what you're able, eventually, to build.
