Nelly & Nadine
Nelly & Nadine is the unlikely love story between two women falling in love on Christmas Eve, 1944, in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Despite being separated in the last months of the war, Nelly and Nadine manage to later reunite and spend the rest of their life together. For many years their love story was kept a secret, even to some of their closest family. Now Nelly’s grandchild, Sylvie, has decided to open Nelly and Nadine’s unseen personal archives and uncover their remarkable story.
Director: Magnus Gertten
Year: 2022
Nelly & Nadine is the unlikely love story between two women falling in love on Christmas Eve, 1944, in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. In the middle of the horrors of the war camps the two women begin their life-long love journey. On Christmas Eve the Belgian prisoner and opera singer Nelly Mousset-Vos had been asked to sing Christmas carols in one of the French populated Ravensbrück barracks. After a couple of songs, a voice calls out from the dark: ”Sing something from Madame Butterfly!”.
Nelly hesitates, but then she sings ”Un bel di vedremo”, an aria about the waiting for a loved one. Afterwards the woman who requested the song from Madame Butterfly emerges from the darkness. She kisses Nelly and says: ”The Good Lord has been kind to us”. Her name is Nadine Hwang and in this moment Nelly and Nadine become a couple, spending as much time together as possible.
But after two moths they are separated when Nelly is transferred to a different camp. After being liberated towards the end of the war, they manage to reunite and decide to start building a life together. For many years Nelly and Nadine’s lifelong relationship was kept a secret, even to some of their closest family. Now Nelly’s grandchild, Sylvie, has decided to open Nelly and Nadine’s unseen personal archives and uncover their remarkable story. Among the photos, love letters and film reels in the archive, there is also a diary written by Nelly. In these previously unpublished personal notes, she tells her life story including details about being in love in the middle of the camp horrors, the complicated reunification with Nadine after the war, deciding to move to Venezuela so they could live freely and coming back to Europe in the early 70’s to spend their last years in Brussels.
Nelly & Nadine is a remarkable story about war sufferings, mysteries, love against all odds, the healing power of music, well kept secrets, and the complicated family stories of concentration camp survivors, still trying to deal with the ghosts of the past.