Out Of Africa | Plot, Cast, Awards, & Facts - Encyclopedia Britannica

Out of Africa, American-British film, released in 1985, that was based on events in the life of Karen Blixen-Finecke, who wrote under the name Isak Dinesen. It starred Meryl Streep and Robert Redford and was known for its beautiful cinematography. The movie won seven Academy Awards, including that for best picture.

The events of the movie take place between 1913 and 1931. It begins in Denmark, where Karen (played by Streep) proposes a marriage of convenience to her friend (and cousin) Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke (Klaus Maria Brandauer). Planning to run a dairy farm in Africa, they travel to British East Africa and subsequently marry. The couple later goes to the farm, which is near Nairobi, and Bror informs her that he has decided to operate a coffee farm. More interested in hunting, he largely leaves Karen to manage the venture on her own. As she explores the area, she comes face-to-face with a lioness, but the big-game hunter Denys Finch Hatton (Redford) and his friend Berkeley (Michael Kitchen) arrive in time to save her. Later, on the farm, she attends to the medical needs of the Kikuyu people who live in the area.

World War I breaks out, and Bror is sent to the front. When an army messenger tells Karen that she is to send supplies to the front, she decides to bring the items herself. She encounters Denys and Berkeley on her journey, and Denys gives her a compass. She braves many hazards but succeeds in getting the supply train to the front, where she reunites with Bror. Upon her return to the farm, however, Karen discovers that she has contracted syphilis from the philandering Bror. After receiving treatment in Denmark, Karen returns to the farm and ends her relationship with Bror. During this time she also builds a school for the Kikuyu. One day Denys takes her on a safari, during which they begin a romance, and he eventually moves into Karen’s home. All is not idyllic, however, as Berkeley dies from a form of malaria, and Karen struggles to keep the coffee farm financially afloat. Denys’s inability to fully commit to Karen leads her to break off the relationship. Shortly thereafter, her barn burns down, and Karen decides to return to Denmark. She sells off her possessions and begs the colonial authority to allow the Kikuyu workers to continue to live on the farm. She and Denys have a final dinner together, but Denys later crashes his biplane and is killed. Before leaving for home, Karen gives Denys’s compass to her foreman, Farah (Malick Bowens).

Awards And Honors: Golden Globe Award (1986) Academy Award (1986) (Show more) On the Web: American Film Institute - Out of Africa (1985) (Feb. 25, 2026) (Show more) See all related content Britannica Quiz Oscar-Worthy Movie Trivia

Most of Out of Africa was shot on location in Kenya, near the Ngong Hills outside Nairobi. Orson Welles, David Lean, and Nicolas Roeg considered turning Dinesen’s book Out of Africa (1937) into a film before director Sydney Pollack succeeded, using a screenplay by Karl Luedtke that drew on more recent biographies of both Dinesen and Finch Hatton as well as on Dinesen’s writings.