Gavagai

During the turbulent shoot of a Medea adaptation in Senegal, German lead actress Maja (Maren Eggert) seeks refuge in an affair with her Afro-French co-star Nourou (Jean-Christophe Folly). Months later, the two meet again at the film’s premiere in Berlin. Old feelings flare up, but a racist incident casts a shadow over their reunion. The tensions only grow as everyone tries to do the right thing. While the ancient tragedy comes to a head on screen, a contemporary drama unfolds. The title of Ulrich Köhler’s film refers to Quine’s thought experiment, according to which the meaning of a word in an entirely foreign language cannot be inferred from the utterance and its context alone. Köhler, a leading figure of the “Berlin School”, turns this into an incisive satire on cultural misunderstandings, privilege and the self-righteousness of the cultural establishment. Remarkably, Köhler also questions his own role as a filmmaker: the parallels to “Sleeping Sickness”, his earlier film shot in Africa, are unmistakable. For all its complexity, “Gavagai” is fast-paced, often very funny and remarkably sharp. “A meta-drama as intricately layered as it is humorous, about unexamined privilege and stereotyping, which self-critically addresses reservations about privileged filmmakers. In its openness and ambiguity, the film draws a clear line between itself and the overly cerebral ‘Medea’ adaptation seen in excerpts.” (Lexikon des Internationalen Films)