The lesbian love story that flourished in a German concentration camp during World War II

Nadine Hwan

, who was born in Madrid because she was the daughter of the Chinese ambassador, and

, a Belgian opera singer, arrived in

by different routes.

But it was in that scenario beyond the inhospitable, known as

, where they shared laughter and kisses.

They also left by different paths: Nelly was transferred to Mauthausen, while Nadine appeared among the 30,000 survivors who arrived at the port of Malmö (Sweden) on April 28, 1945.

's camera

captured her for a newsreel, among dozens of faces as anonymous as they were smiling, savoring freedom.

Nadine is the one who appears most serious, barely a smirk of victory over the Nazi death appears on her lips.

"He's thinking about Nelly: at that moment he couldn't know if she was alive or dead," speculates

, director of

a documentary that

, among other platforms, premieres, of course, on February 14, the day of the lovers

Or the lovers, of course...

Nelly & Nadine

is already the third documentary, after

(2011) or

(2015), in which Gertten takes up the images from Jerring's newsreel, which impress with their aura of modernity, as if the horrors of war would have been definitely behind us.

The director was predestined: "In 1945, my father was a teenager and he was in the port of Malmö that day, he saw it live, and that marked him for the rest of his life."

Nadine, very serious in the transfer of prisoners from Ravensbrück to Malmö.NILLS JERRING

The daunting task that Gertten set for himself, without even being fully aware of it, was to name all those faces.

"When I finished the first documentary, I wasn't thinking of making a second, but there are already 70 faces that we have identified," he confesses.

"Last week a woman wrote to me saying that she had recognized her mother watching

The number keeps increasing. And it is a very interesting microcosm. There is everything: Jewish survivors, resistance fighters from all over Europe, legendary British spies. .. Although the most interesting is Nadine."

It is not very clear why the Germans arrested Nadine, but it is almost certain that she was involved in the passage of Spanish fugitives to France.

Marcus Gertten, director of 'Nelly & Nadine'

Indeed, Nadine grew up in Madrid, like her famous sister

, who became Franco's interpreter and worked for three decades in our Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Both of them Spanishized the name,

, perhaps because her father, a fan of bullfighting, was known as

.

It is said that the man wanted a boy, and he dressed Nadine as a matador as a child.

In any case, she chose to go to China, where "she was part of high society, which allowed her to do things that no other woman in the country could do, such as driving, learning languages, studying law, working for one of the ministers of the country, and even wear the colonel's uniform, although it is not very clear if it was only an honorary position", explains Gertten.

Nadine Hwang and Nelly Mousset-Vos lived their love story in Caracas.SUNDANCE TV

But he decided to return to Europe, to Paris, to be able to experience his sexuality, something that was impossible in China.

In France she became the chauffeur and lover of

.

This writer would also deserve her own film: she founded a

in reaction to the official one, which didn't admit a female writer until 1980, with the entry of

Whose great love of hers, by the way, was the American

.

It is not very well known how they met again, they had to exchange their addresses in the field

"It is not very clear why the Germans detained Nadine, but it is almost certain that she was involved in an organization that operated in San Juan de Luz, to transfer fugitives to the other side of the Spanish border," the director clarifies.

The story of

, whose diaries and home movies have made

is not far behind either.

In addition to singing opera, she served as a Mata-Hari spy for a resistance group, and was decorated after the war.

At

, she sang

for the female prisoners.

"It is not very well known how they met again, it is clear that they had to exchange their addresses in the field, although the Red Cross helped people locate each other. But no, nobody filmed in slow motion how they ran towards each other ", ironically.

What there are are super 8 movies filmed in Caracas, the destination chosen to live her love to the end, in a flat with separate rooms.

Mousset-Vos's granddaughter helps piece together her grandmother's love story.SUNDANCE TV

Nelly & Nadine

is also about that, about a time when it was impossible to make the obvious official.

Although Nelly left her husband and her daughter in Europe, she was never able to be completely frank with her family.

And so to this day.

The common thread of the documentary is her own granddaughter,

, a good woman who has taken a few decades to face everything that her grandmother represented.

But she ended up taking down the boxes from the attic, she read her journals and retrieved her films, to give her grandmother a visibility she never fully enjoyed in life.

"For me it has been a blessing to discover this love story, because documentarians are always telling brutal and terrible stories," says Gertten.

"This story is very inspiring, especially in times as dark as the present."

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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