Nelly and Nadine meet in Ravensbrück concentration camp. They spend the rest of their lives together. Decades later, Nelly’s granddaughter goes in search of clues. A poignant film about a love story and the need for individual and collective remembrance.
Nadine Hwang
Self (archive footage)
Nelly Mousset-Vos
Self (archive footage)
Sylvie Bianchi
Self
Christian
Self
Joan Schenkar
Self
Anne Bianchi
Self
José Rafael Lovera
Self
Maria Alexandra Lovera
Self
Irene Krausz-Fainman
Self
Ronit Nadine Frenkel
Self
Natalie Clifford Barney
Self (archive footage)
Jack
Self (archive footage)
Raymond
Self (archive footage)
Trijntje de Haan- Zwagerman
Self (archive footage)
Lola Sylman
Self (archive footage)
Maria Zurowska Kurowska
Self (archive footage)
Elsie Ragusin
Self (archive footage)
Mary O'Shaughnessy
Self (archive footage)
Bernhard Kempler
Self (archive footage; uncredited)
Anita Lobel
Self (archive footage; uncredited)
Hinda Jakubowicz
Self (archive footage; uncredited)
Fredzia Marmur
Self (archive footage; uncredited)
Felicja Sonabend
Self (archive footage; uncredited)
Sara Nowak
Self (archive footage; uncredited)
Helen Fox
Self (archive footage; uncredited)
Mary Lindell
Self (archive footage; uncredited)
Masza Stern
Self (archive footage; uncredited)
Lolka Calel
Self (archive footage; uncredited)
Mala Landsberg
Self (archive footage; uncredited)
Judith Popinski
Self (archive footage; uncredited)
Rosetta Ahmed
Self (archive footage; uncredited)
Marguerite Lartigau
Self (archive footage; uncredited)
Eleonora Fryc
Self (archive footage; uncredited)
Edith Schimmel
Self (archive footage; uncredited)
Magdalein Schimmel
Self (archive footage; uncredited)
Anne Coesens
Voice of Nelly
Bwanga Pilipili
Voice of Nadine
Director, Writer
Magnus Gertten
Writer
Jesper Osmund
August 19, 2024
6
At the very start of this documentary, we are shown a photograph of a woman staring into the camera. It's fairly unlikely she knew it was pointing at the group in which she was standing, but it was taken as the Ravensbrück concentration camp was being liberated by the Swiss Red Cross in 1945. She is quickly identified as Nadine Hwang and now director Magnus Gertten tries to piece together her story. For that, he is fortunate. She kept a series of diaries and when it falls to her grand-daughter to finally read them - with quite a degree of emotion-laden trepidation - we discover that before the war she was in a loving relationship with Nelly Mousset Vos. With the aid of photographs and the sometimes quite harrowing narration from her text, we trace the lives of these two women both before and after the horrors of the Nazi invasion. Not wishing, in any way, to trivialise this - but as a documentary it's all a bit lightweight. The story itself is one that's truly ghastly, empowering, emotional and sometimes quite shocking, but factually there is just way too much missing, and what we do have to go on and/or know is squeezed just once too often. It might actually have made for a better source as a drama, allowing some of the understandable gaps to be filled in, albeit speculatively, and leaving less scope for us to have to make our own guesses about their difficulties not just with the SS but with a society as yet unfamiliar with their candid and loving lesbianism. Much of the heavy lifting comes from the soundtrack - it turns out Nelly was quite a good singer, too - but somehow it's really only the shell of a poignant story that falls disappointingly short. It is worth watching, and the plentiful photographs and some archive footage add a little richness, but it doesn't quite deliver.