Nelly & Nadine

Director Magnus Gertten Attending 5/7.

Winner of the prestigious Berlinale Teddy Award for best LGBTQ documentary, the remarkable Nelly & Nadine is a love story that begins in the hell of the Ravensbrück concentration camp. On Christmas Eve 1944, Belgian prisoner and opera singer Nelly Mousset-Vos is singing Christmas carols in one of the French-populated barracks. A voice calls out from the dark, “Sing something from Madame Butterfly!” Nelly hesitates, but then sings “Un bel di vedremo,” an aria about the waiting for a loved one. Afterwards the woman who requested the song emerges from the darkness. She kisses Nelly and says, “The Good Lord has been kind to us.” Her name is Nadine Hwang and at that moment Nelly and Nadine become a couple, spending as much time together as possible. After Harbor of Hope and Every Face Has a Name, Nelly & Nadine is veteran documentary director Gertten’s third film inspired by archival footage showing survivors from German concentration camps arriving in Malmö, Sweden.

Director Biography

Magnus Gertten is a director and producer from Malmö, Sweden with an extensive radio, television and documentary film background. His feature documentaries include Rolling Like a Stone (2005), Becoming Zlatan… (2015) and Only the Devil Lives Without Hope (2020), and MSPIFF screened Harbor of Hope and Every Face Has a Name. Nelly & Nadine (2022) is his most recent film.

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