Gavagai

As the son of aid workers, Ulrich Köhler spent part of his childhood in Africa. That experience still shapes his cinema. “Sleeping Sickness” told of European arrogance in Cameroon, of the grey zones between help and domination. Now Köhler returns to Africa — not only geographically but above all analytically: this time what interests him is mutual exploitation and the fine games of power between desire and guilt.

In Senegal, a French director is shooting a film that radically reinterprets the Medea myth. Her Medea (Maren Eggert) is enslaved by an African tribe. Jason (Jean-Christophe Folly), heir to the throne and father of her children, casts her out. The parts are played by Maja and Nourou, who are having an affair off set. When the film then premieres in Berlin, their roles are reversed: art and life begin to bleed into one another, and positions of power shift.

Köhler looks closely at these asymmetries: how myths are tamed, colonised — and how feelings become currency. Privilege turns out not to be stable; it moves with the context — and liberal guilt, when it wants too much, can push the excluded further away still. “Gavagai” is a playful topography of misunderstanding: encounters full of racism and accusation, broken up by comic undertones. A film about the slippage of meaning — and perhaps Köhler’s bravest analysis of the present so far.

Shown at the 2025 edition of Around the World in 14 Films, Berlin.

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