Nowhere in Africa

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

It is so rare to find a film where you become quickly, simply absorbed in the story.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Everywhere in Nowhere in Africa, skill and art translate into vivid life.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

This is an intelligent epic told without special pleading, a film able to cut deep enough to reveal a keen specificity of experience.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

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.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Enchanted and thrilling film.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The movie's strength is its refusal to offer easy answers.

USA Today Mike Clark

It's also as good as "Out of Africa."

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A lovely film with a deeply humane perspective.

Miami Herald Cary Darling

It has everything Oscar voters fall in love with: sweep, romance, accessibility and social conscience.

Washington Post Rita Kempley

Consistently absorbing family saga is primarily a safari of the soul.

Newsweek David Ansen

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.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

The movie's real strength lies in its intelligent, sympathetic account of the dynamic, difficult marriage of Regina's parents.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

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.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

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.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

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.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

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.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

This picture is absorbing -- and eye-filling -- whether the prose and the passion are connecting or running on parallel tracks.

TV Guide Ken Fox

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.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Despite a shaky narrative focus and dramatic reticence, its journey is consistently absorbing.

Chicago Reader Bill Stamets

For the most part this is a scenic and well-scored Holocaust survival tale.

Variety Derek Elley

Easy on the eye and effortlessly entertaining across almost 2½ hours.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

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.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

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.

Slate David Edelstein

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.

Washington Post Eve Zibart

What rescues the film is Gernot Roll's spare, almost aesthetic cinematography, and the quality of the acting.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Isn't really a dull film so much as an oddly quaint one that seems to find a comfortable perspective about drastic circumstances.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Schmaltzy and endless.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

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.

Village Voice Laura Sinagra

A straightforward epic, almost alarmingly quaint in the telling.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

Though the story itself is undeniably fascinating, this somewhat prosaic account simply doesn't do it justice.

San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann

Sinks into melodrama.