Love & Sex under Nazi Occupation questions the burning mystery of intimate heterosexual and homosexual relations in times of war... and shows how being close to death reinforces the yearning for passion, for pleasure, for transgression, for desire as a last burst of freedom, as an ultimate call to life. Nearly two hundred thousands children are thought to be born of the union of French women with German soldiers. Women weren't the Germans' only conquests; indeed, occupied Paris swarms with all kinds of homosexuals—from Genet to Cocteau—who treated with the occupier. The fate of those women who were shaved at the end of the war for fraternizing with Germans is the punishment of a France that lied down and slept with the enemy.
Editing
Jarring archival footage woven into intimate testimony.
Writing
Refuses moral comfort—lets contradictions breathe.
Production
Rare access to voices France tried to silence.
Director
Isabelle Clarke
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The 'tonte' (head-shaving) of 20,000 women in 1944 became a ritualized purging of national shame—directed at civilians, not actual war criminals.
Arletty's defiant courtroom quote—'My heart is French but my ass is international'—was censored from official transcripts for decades.
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