31 May 2023
Opened after many years, a family archive offers intimate records of a love that began between two women in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944.
For most of her life, looking at the records of her grandmother’s imprisonment in the Ravensbrück concentration camp seemed too painful for Sylvie Bianchi. For years, Sylvie kept her grandmother’s letters, diaries, photographs and home movies in the attic of her family’s French farmhouse. The documentary “Nelly & Nadine” tells of how Sylvie finally opened the dusty boxes and drew from them a surprising story of love and resistance.
Sylvie learns that her grandmother, Nelly Mousset-Vos, was an opera singer who spied for the French Resistance. Nelly was imprisoned at Ravensbrück in 1944, and there she met Nadine Hwang, who worked in literary circles in Paris and was probably involved in resistance efforts. They fell in love. Then they were separated, but after the war they moved to Venezuela together. They lived as a couple until Nadine’s death in 1972, and Nadine documented the life they shared in the home movies we also see in the film. Answering director Magnus Gertten’s questions with great candor, Sylvie says she remembers Nadine, but that Nadine was only ever referred to as her grandmother’s friend and housemate.
Given the amount of documentation shown in the documentary, this is quite an astonishing love story. Gertten first identifies Nadine in newsreel footage of refugees who found shelter in Sweden after being liberated from the camp. That footage alone—capturing hundreds of joyful faces, and Nadine as a lone, somber figure in the crowd—is remarkable.
But it is equally miraculous that Nelly and Nadine’s records were preserved by Nelly’s family—historically, an archival courtesy rarely extended to women who loved women. The film is a moving work because it portrays an archive as unexpected as the film itself.
But it is just as miraculous that Nelly and Nadine’s records were preserved by Nelly’s family—historically speaking, an archival courtesy we rarely encounter when it comes to women who loved women. The film moves forward with the intimacy it portrays, opening up an archive as extraordinary as the love story it pursues.
*This article was published in December 2022 in The New York Times.