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Nowhere in Africa
Metascore
72 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 31 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 23 out of 31
  2. Mixed: 8 out of 31
  3. Negative: 0 out of 31
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  1. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    100
    It is so rare to find a film where you become quickly, simply absorbed in the story.
  2. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    100
    Everywhere in Nowhere in Africa, skill and art translate into vivid life.
    All this critic's reviews
  3. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Rick Kisonak
    90
    The movie gives us lovingly shot landscapes, portraits of extraordinary friendships, a great score, dialogue that only occasionally slips into history lessons, a number of memorably etched minor characters, a splendid performance by its youngest star and two mysteries.
  4. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    90
    This is an intelligent epic told without special pleading, a film able to cut deep enough to reveal a keen specificity of experience.
  5. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    88
    A lovely film with a deeply humane perspective.
  6. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Cary Darling
    88
    It has everything Oscar voters fall in love with: sweep, romance, accessibility and social conscience.
  7. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Carrie Rickey
    88
    Enchanted and thrilling film.
  8. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Mike Clark
    88
    It's also as good as "Out of Africa."
  9. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    88
    The movie's strength is its refusal to offer easy answers.
  10. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Ella Taylor
    80
    The movie's real strength lies in its intelligent, sympathetic account of the dynamic, difficult marriage of Regina's parents.
  11. Newsweek
    Reviewed by: David Ansen
    80
    This German movie, with its lush cinematography and lovely score, has the sturdiness of an old-fashioned Hollywood epic. What isn’t Hollywood is Link’s refusal to tell the audience how to feel at every moment.
  12. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Rita Kempley
    80
    Consistently absorbing family saga is primarily a safari of the soul.
  13. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marc Savlov
    78
    Thanks to the superior performances by all four leads (including incredibly expressive Karoline Eckertz, who appears as the teenage Regina midway through), Nowhere in Africa is a meditation on everything from race and class and cultural impermanence to the inexhaustible malleability of youth.
  14. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    75
    If lush landscapes and exotic wildlife are what you're after, this isn't the safari for you. But many moviegoers will respond to its mixture of family drama and Holocaust-era history.
  15. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    75
    This picture is absorbing -- and eye-filling -- whether the prose and the passion are connecting or running on parallel tracks.
  16. Charlotte Observer
    Reviewed by: Lawrence Toppman
    75
    Writer-director Caroline Link (who did the Oscar-nominated "Beyond Silence") adapted Stefanie Zweig's expatriate memoir gracefully, languidly and with full understanding of its heroine.
  17. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    75
    Audience empathy for the displaced Redlichs, coupled with the filmmaker's proffered charms of wise natives and their mysterious rituals, goes a long way toward making this lyrical travelogue a crowd pleaser.
  18. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    70
    Beautifully shot on location in Kenya and filled with touching, almost magical moments, Link's film has been nominated for the 2002 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film.
  19. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    70
    Despite a shaky narrative focus and dramatic reticence, its journey is consistently absorbing.
  20. Variety
    Reviewed by: Derek Elley
    70
    Easy on the eye and effortlessly entertaining across almost 2½ hours.
  21. The New Republic
    Reviewed by: Stanley Kauffmann
    70
    This is a fictional film, but it is based on a novel by Stefanie Zweig that is autobiographical. The adaptation was done by the director Caroline Link, whose screenplay is serviceable and whose directing is generally sure.
  22. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Bill Stamets
    70
    For the most part this is a scenic and well-scored Holocaust survival tale.
  23. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Sean Axmaker
    67
    Never quite escapes the Euro-centric blinders of its characters, but its engagement with their evolving sense of identity and story of empowerment and acceptance is nonetheless rousing.
  24. Slate
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    60
    There's something too refined and emotionally neutral about Nowhere in Africa, as if Link had directed with white gloves. Maybe she knew how loaded this African-Jewish subject was and didn't want it push it too hard. Maybe that's why she won an Oscar.
  25. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Eve Zibart
    60
    What rescues the film is Gernot Roll's spare, almost aesthetic cinematography, and the quality of the acting.
  26. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    50
    Though the story itself is undeniably fascinating, this somewhat prosaic account simply doesn't do it justice.
  27. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    50
    Schmaltzy and endless.
  28. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Edward Guthmann
    50
    Sinks into melodrama.
  29. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Liam Lacey
    50
    Isn't really a dull film so much as an oddly quaint one that seems to find a comfortable perspective about drastic circumstances.
  30. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    50
    With sumptuous widescreen photography and a pounding world-music score, the film makes for an absorbing travelogue at best, as pretty as a picture book and just as flat on the surface.
  31. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Laura Sinagra
    50
    A straightforward epic, almost alarmingly quaint in the telling.
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