Ulrich Köhler knows what we’re expecting. Spending any amount of time out in the world or inside a movie theater has taught us to take sides, set the objectively good against the undeniably bad. But in “Gavagai” (2025), which made its world premiere at the New York Film Festival, writer/director Köhler doesn’t settle for a trite morality tale. What begins as a treatise on demanding creative types and their shaky personal lives swerves into a more unsettling lane when Nourou (Jean-Christophe Folly)—the co–star of a new “Medea” film that’s set to debut at a festival— is accosted in front of his hotel. Köhler’s ideas regarding the confrontation (which is based on a true story involving Folly) are complicated, perhaps even fluid at present. And so hashing out the details and motives from all sides leads the film down an uneven narrative path that lands at an appropriately incomplete dead end.
Told in four languages (English, French, German, and Wolof), “Gavagai” is ostensibly about words and their consequences. The term gavagai refers to—according to an uninformed Google search—the “indeterminacy of translation,” so it’s natural that “Gavagai” derives its core tension from missed connections and mixed messaging. On the “Medea” set, Caroline (Nathalie Richard) storms into the ocean to chide Maja (Maren Eggert)—her Medea—and in a fit of directorial rage, tosses her back under water. Maja threatens to leave the set, an action Caroline brushes off if only because she has other crises to manage. Besides, later that night, most of the gang buries the hatchet over dinner at Nourou’s dad’s house. All exude cool, but hold tight to their respective grudges, including Nourou’s dad, an actor who earlier had scolded Caroline for relegating him to the extras’ trailer.
The Murky Spots of Human Manners
On set and off, tempers boil, but it’s Nourou’s hotel incident that permits the film’s fever to break. Before entering the hotel, Nourou sits inside the entrance, rolling a cigarette. A hotel security guard intervenes, first asking Nourou to step outside (“It’s raining and cold!”) and then, demands to see his I.D. before ushering him outside. When Maja pulls up to the curb, she catches up quickly (“Why don’t you ask for that woman’s I.D.?”) then—against Nourou’s wishes—escalates the matter to hotel management, which after some resistance about delegation (the security guards are not actual hotel employees), vows that it’ll never happen again.
The spiky discomfort runs parallel to Maja and Nouru’s tenuous romance, which seems only to exist when they’re on set or in the same city. But when Nouru shows up at Maja’s apartment with donuts after a late night out (“He smells like beer.”), Köhler muddles the arrangement further. Mining these human errors both for comedy and horror, Köhler approaches then dials back from the biting and unforgivable satirical mood of Ruben Östlund (“Triangle of Sadness”). The dull edges (compared to Östlund) aren’t necessarily a narrative cop-out, rather it’s Köhler wading in the murky spots of human manners, similar to the squirmy cinema of his real-life partner, the brilliant Maren Ade (“Toni Erdmann”).
Köler’s Zig-Zag Subversions
The final segment of the film round trips back to “Medea,” and it’s a curious decision to devote so much screen-time to a film-within-a-film. Still, it’s consistent with Köhler’s zig-zagging subversion, proving that the show must go on, even if—and especially because—most of the drama is happening backstage. The central trio (Eggert, Folly, and Richard) are effective and believable as a dysfunctional work family so comfortable with each other that they can bicker and make up, rinse and repeat. As director, Köhler has a sympathetic ear, willing to take in everyone’s story, including the maybe-bigoted security guard who ends up losing his job. And there, perhaps, is where this fiction film turns to outlandish fantasy: dueling factions try to hear each other out, but meanwhile, on planet earth—and the “Medea” set, that bloody patricidal/matricidal war zone—skews closer to reality.
“Gavagai” had its world premiere at the New York Film Festival. The next scheduled screening is on Thursday, Oct. 2.
