Best remembered for 2018’s In My Room, Ulrich Köhler looks back on some of the production history behind the Cameroon-set Sleeping Sickness (2011). In Gavagai, actors Nourou (Jean-Christophe Folly, who previously starred in Köhler’s Sleeping Sickness) and the German Maja (Maren Eggert) form a romantic relationship following a horrendous production of a new Medea in Nourou’s home country of Senegal. Film director Caroline (Nathalie Richard) updates Euripides’s original play by adding an interracial element. That’s because the German Medea disregards her status as a refugee in Jason’s African country. The two actors reunite sometime later in Berlin for the film’s premiere, but their catch-up is disrupted by Kolakowski, a racist Polish guard at their hotel. This incident not only affects Nourou and Maja but also affects the film’s perception before its screening.
Köhler first shared this idea with Folly before writing the screenplay. He says that he felt like a “white saviour” at the premiere of Sleeping Sickness when security forced Folly to present his ID. Köhler stepped in, and this led to Folly switching hotels. While it is easy to label Gavagai as a semi-autobiography of Folly and Köhler’s experience in the film industry, the film explores the failures and crises that come from cross-cultural productions. Köhler employs drama and satire in order to convey this systemic problem and its harsh reality.
Gavagai offers sharp social commentary,. A highlight of the story is the Medea press conference before its public screenings. The scene reveals Caroline’s biases and Nourou’s true feelings about how he is used by the director. While it has the typical responses from neoliberal filmmakers when it comes to questions about race, as Caroline says that her Medea is for “people of diverse backgrounds,” it does tap into the alienation Nourou feels as one of the few Black actors in a predominantly white space. Köhler unveils the subtle, casual acts of racism. He reveals how many white people don’t see how negative they are from the surface.
The script, however, is not without shortcomings. Caroline does not fully explain why she wants to tackle Medea. She merely states the need to revise it, yet remains oblivious to the prejudices she reinforced in the play. Overall, the motivation of each character lacks a more detailed examination. There are also issues with the credibility of the developments. For example: Nourou steps into Kolakowski’s car when it is evident from the earlier scenes that the now-fired security guard wouldn’t change his attitudes towards Black people (he claims that Polish people have it worse than Black people).
Despite the flaws, Köhler does a very good job at exploring the ways people connect despite their upbringings. Plusl, he questions who tells whose story. At its best, Gavagai contests the notion of collaboration because not everybody has a fair and equal stake in the creative process. Plus, he recognises the laborious cooperation embedded in the medium of film. Cinema is a construction and an outlet for the auteur’s mind.
Gavagai showed at te New York International Film Festival.
