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Nelly och Nadine

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Nelly & Nadine

Nadine Hwang

Nelly Mousset-Vos

Sylvie Bianchi

Christian

Joan Schenkar

Anne Bianchi

José Rafael Lovera

Maria Alexandra Lovera

Irene Krausz-Fainman

Ronit Nadine Frenkel

Natalie Clifford Barney

Jack

Raymond

Trijntje de Haan- Zwagerman

Lola Sylman

Maria Zurowska Kurowska

Elsie Ragusin

Mary O'Shaughnessy

Bernhard Kempler

Anita Lobel

Hinda Jakubowicz

Fredzia Marmur

Felicja Sonabend

Sara Nowak

Helen Fox

Mary Lindell

Masza Stern

Lolka Calel

Mala Landsberg

Judith Popinski

Rosetta Ahmed

Marguerite Lartigau

Eleonora Fryc

Edith Schimmel

Magdalein Schimmel

Anne Coesens

Bwanga Pilipili

Magnus Gertten

Marthe Belsvik Starvrum

Jesper Osmund

Phil Jandaly

Caroline Troedsson

Ove Rishøj Jensen

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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.

Nelly & Nadine | Trailer | Berlinale 2022

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