Three reasons to discover Nelly & Nadine

A documentary of power and sensitivity around a 40-year love between two women, born in the concentration camp where they were deported

For historical context

After Harbor of hope in 2011 and Every face has a name in 2015, Nelly & Nadine is the third documentary that the Swedish Magnus Gertten devotes to a little-known event of the Second World War: the so-called “white bus” operation. Named after the expedition led by the Swedish Red Cross in April 1945 to transport no less than 17,000 former concentration camp prisoners to Sweden (one of the few neutral European countries at the time along with Switzerland) , the result of a long negotiation with senior Nazi dignitaries, including Heinrich Himmler. A mission which far exceeded its preliminary framework since in addition to only the Norwegian and Danish detainees planned for repatriation, the famous buses will also exfiltrate French and Polish people. Which explains why the local media were instructed not to talk about it before the operation was completed so that once they arrived safely in Malmö, the men and women involved could move on as they wished in the country.

For the keen eye of the director

It was by delving into the documents of the time that Magnus Gertten found the spark that gave birth to Nelly & Nadine. “ One day was particularly documented by the Swedish media, that of April 28, 1945, when the best cameramen of the time made the trip and gave birth to haunting images, often in close-up. People who had just escaped the horror of the camps. And I immediately wondered if it would be possible to identify these survivors, almost 70 years later », explains the filmmaker. A woman specifically attracts his attention. “ A Chinese-looking woman standing near a wooden fence, dressed in a striped camp uniform. She stood out among the others with her very serious face which contrasted with those, the majority, who openly rejoiced at their liberation. During the editing of the first two documentaries, I kept coming back to the image of this fascinating woman. I kept wondering what she was thinking “. Gertten begins by identifying her name: Nadine Hwang and publishes an appeal to find her on social networks. A Venezuelan living in Paris noticed him and wrote to him to tell him that the famous Nadine had been his babysitter in Caracas, at the end of the 1960s. Before, in the wake of a screening ofEvery Face has a Name in Paris at the end of 2016, a couple, Christian and Sylvie, came to meet him and began to tell him the story of the relationship between Nadine Hwang and the Belgian singer Nelly Mousset who is none other than Sylvie's grandmother. The latter also opens up all of Nelly's archives, including a diary kept during her detention. This is where concretely is born Nelly & Nadine with this idea of ​​a story within History. That of a romantic passion born in a barracks in the Ravensbrück concentration camp and gave these two women the strength to endure the horrors of the Nazi camps.

For the modesty of the story

Sylvie did not know the extent of this love story between her grandmother and Nadine. And will therefore discover it during the creation of this investigative documentary that Magnus Gertten develops with infinite modesty so as not to rush anything. And this bias allows him to develop a film without the slightest spirit of sensationalism or voyeurism. Nelly & Nadine offers both a fascinating historical testimony and a portrait of rare sensitivity of a love, born in the heart of absolute horror, and which lasted nearly 40 years.

Nelly and Nadine. By Magnus Gertten. Duration 1h33