Schlafrankheit (Sleeping Sickness), a French-language German entrant in the main competition here in Berlin, is a detailed character study and post-colonial allegory in the mould of Claire Denis. The film follows two doctors who find themselves lost between two worlds: Africa and Europe. The first, Ebbo (Pierre Bokma), is a German who has been an aid worker in Cameroon for the best part of two decades and who can't bring himself to go back to Europe and rejoin his wife and daughter having left that life behind. "You're blacker than me" one local tells Ebbo as he expresses his deep affinity with the river and the land's folklore. He no longer feels European, yet he is not African. The same is true for the second doctor, a young black Parisian played Jean-Christophe Folly. He is a Frenchman with no first-hand experience of life in Africa and he is staunchly European with little time for the less organised and regulated life he finds in Africa. But he is always cast as an "other" wherever he goes: never taken for a European or an African. One Cameroonian, refuses to believe the visiting doctor is French and asks questions about his family background until he learns that his father was originally from the Congo. "Ah! You're Congolese!" he says, relieved at having solved the mystery. Back in France colleagues are equally unsure about his nationality. "When did you move here?" he is asked during one quasi-racist conversation about African penis length in the work canteen. "I was born here."
Both men are righteous and incorruptible, staunchly sticking up for matters of principle, playing by the rules and refusing to pay bribes or do favours for those in high positions. Both also express reservations over Africa's ability to manage itself without European help, fearing - with some justification - the corruption of local officials when it comes to the spending of foreign aid money, with one local diplomat more interested in Ebbo's car than the region's epidemic. But if they distrust the local authorities, they also seem to distrust the motives of those back in Europe who would seek to reduce the amount of medical aid being sent to the country, such as the politician who declares that "only the market can solve Africa's problems" - promoting a policy of trade rather than aid. Using these two stranded, isolated characters (one back and one white), Sleeping Sickness is able to explore multiple sides of post-colonial Africa with seeming objectivity, whilst also commenting on African identity and its inescapable connection with ethnicity.
Director Ulrich Kohler has made a beautiful and even poetic film which, owing to the dominance of the French language, may stand a decent chance of being picked up for foreign distribution - something German films usually find a problem. Fans of the aforementioned critical darling Claire Denis will love it. Personally (as with Denis' work) I admired it more than I connected with it, finding it to be an intellectual exercise rather than an especially emotional piece of storytelling.