I've been traveling since I was 15 and spent the majority of my life outside Europe... these two millennials, who decide to travel to South Africa in a 4WD without properly preparing for the trip - I've met people like that many times.
You see them taking advantage of local hospitality, you see them getting taken advantage of. You see them adopting a dog, which functions as a relationship stabilizer until it is eaten by crocodiles, and then they adopt another. They muse about each other and border problems, but fail to connect to anyone even though they're invited many times. In Africa, that's pretty hard to do - instead of getting hooked to some place or some people, they just browse through some of the least developed and therefore most interesting countries of the world, staying on campsites rather than an NGO. Germans are not all like that, if you travel a lot, you will invariably meet German expats as we are everywhere, because we can't stand our lifeless culture.
These two at least admit and address their own naivety and raised some money (for an anti-female circumcision project, even though it's the middle of the Ebola outbreak). But they can't get off their high horse - when a witch doctor looks for the thief of their money (which they left on the seat of their unlocked car),the woman just can't help to point out how primitive these Africans are. So German... always the teacher, never the student.
Instead of watching this vanity project, watch films made by locals about locals, not entitled wannabes who take their shallow opinions wherever they go.
Plot summary
When Lena and Ulli start the engine of their old Land Rover, Lady Terés, they have a plan: to drive from Hamburg to South Africa in six months. What they don't know yet is that they won't ever get there. Two totally different characters, jammed together in two square meters of space for almost two years, they experience what it really means to travel: leaving your comfort zone for good. Starting in Morocco, they quickly dive into the life of locals they meet on the road: Jamal, a Moroccan Berber who lives with his dromedaries in the Sahara, Ziza, a Mauritanian musician who fights against suppression from the government, Mame Sy, a mother who set up a private school for the poorest of the poor in Mauritania - and many more. Their journey leads them through the vibrant green canyons of Guinea, the scorching heat of Mali, and the amazing surf of Sierra Leone and Liberia. Everywhere they are, the two Germans make contact with the locals and demonstrate that real travelling is about more than plain sightseeing. But their long journey doesn't spare them the dark side of travelling: they are also confronted by corruption, sickness and even death. Setting out to discover a continent, their trip leads them down a very different road. One they did not expect: the journey to their true inner selves.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
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Movie Reviews
superficial ethno-kitsch - makes me ashamed of my passport
Whining Germans
If you want to watch two self centered and entitled Europeans traipsing through Africa, complaining every step of the way, while barely acknowledging the suffering around them, this show may be for you. I only hung around to see if they were going to break up, but the movie ended abruptly with some vanilla platitudes.
Millenials on the Road
To be honest I only watched up to the point that Lena began criticizing the Africans for being people of faith and putting her own atheistic values on them. They were ill prepared for this trip and apparently had not done any research on the cultures they would be going through. No, Africa is not like Hamburg... not even close. They should have know that.