Documentary Review: 'Nelly and Nadine' is a Must See Documentary

Nelly and Nadine (2022)

Directed by Magnus Gertten

Written by Documentary

Starring Nadine Hwang, Nelly Mousset-Vos, Sylvia Bianchi

Release Date December 16th, 2022

Published December 16th, 2022

The miracles that needed to occur to create the love story of Nadine Hwang and Nelly Mousset-Vos are incalculable. First, an Asian woman needed to find herself in Paris around the time of the start of World War 2. She needs to join the French resistance and be betrayed by a friend and sent to a concentration camp. At the same time, an Opera singer in Brussels has to also join the resistance and also be betrayed, after saving countless lives, and end up at that same concentration camp, Ravensbruck.

They then must meet, fall in love, and survive the concentration camp. They end up being separated as they are being liberated from the camp with each settling back where they were, Nadine in France and Nelly in Brussels. They must exchange letters, and agree to meet and get back together, upending the lives of Nelly's family, including a teenage daughter, and they must move to Venezuela, a place where there was community of LGBTQ people waiting for them.

It's all entirely improbable but it all happened. The new documentary, Nelly and Nadine from the remarkable documentary filmmaker, Magnus Gertten has brought this story to the world and in doing so he's rescued one remarkable piece of world history and a landmark love story in the history of LGBTQ people. It's astonishing, beautiful, heart-rending, and inspiring. That this isn't already an Oscar winning movie is shocking, it's something that has future Best Picture winner written all over it.

For years, the documentation of this immaculate love story languished in an attic on the French countryside. Remember the teenage daughter I mentioned earlier, Nelly's daughter, she wasn't her mother's biggest fan. Thus, the family history wasn't merely uncelebrated, it went unmentioned. That woman's daughter, now grown and mother herself, Sylvie Bianchi, recalls knowing and loving her grandmother Nelly, visiting her home in Venezuela, but Nadine was only known as grandma Nelly's roommate.

Little did Sylvie know, that after her grandmother passed and her things were brought back to Belgium, there was an entire lifetime of history sitting in a box that was deemed to emotionally painful to open up and examine. So, how did this story finally find the light? That's where the amazing Magnus Gertten comes in. While working on a project to identify women in some super 8 footage he'd found of women liberated from concentration camps, he stumbled over Nelly and Nadine, at first unaware that they were connected.

The rest of that story you will need to discover by seeing this incredible documentary. It's a love story, a war story, and a heartbreaking, yet beautiful family story all in one. Nadine Hwang documented everything on an ancient camera, which survived all these years, while Nelly kept a lifelong diary from her time in Ravensbruck through the end of her life in the late 1980s. It's a remarkable treasure trove of information that director Magnus Gertten fills out with incredibly emotional interviews with people who met Nadine and Nelly along the way.

At the center of it all is the spirited and lovely, Sylvie Bianchi who pushes aside the long time family anguish to get to the heart of her grandmother's story. It feels like a story that was destined to be told, one that would linger over the family if it were not told properly. Sylvie Bianchi bravely travels the road with Magnus Gertten and provides a human connection to the past that only deepens this remarkably emotional and historic true story.

Nelly and Nadine is a must see documentary.

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