Documentary
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Rich in invaluable archives despite an academic style, the latest film by the Swedish documentary filmmaker traces the incredible romantic affair between two survivors of the Ravensbrück Nazi camp.
Magnus Gertten, a Swedish documentary filmmaker, builds part of his filmography from the film archives of the arrival of nearly 2,000 survivors of Nazi concentration camps in the port of Malmö, Sweden. That day, many cameramen were present and the different rushes put together amounted to twenty minutes of film. Nelly and Nadine is the third film that Gertten devotes to the pursuit of the faces that appear in these images: who are they, what country do they come from, were they Jews, resistance fighters or communists? What are the ties that unite them beyond the horror of their common destiny? Most of the survivors wave toward the cameras, smiling and waving to the journalists who are documenting the moment. Gertten lingers on the face which does not smile and maintains a striking self-consciousness, his gaze fixed on the lens in an indefinable mixture of fatigue and defiance. This face stands out all the more in the crowd as Nadine Hwang is Chinese, an unusual nationality among victims of the Shoah.
If the filmmaker’s choices, the music coupled with clumsy slow motion, immediately announces a documentary such as a channel like Arte, not to mention it, often offers (with an educational ambition that cannot be attributed to its discredit), the subject attracts interest. Because Nadine Hwang’s life is the life of a novel, an incredible world tour that takes her to every hot spot of the 20th century. Born into the bourgeoisie
