Love Me or Leave Me

Love Me or Leave Me is a film about the Dutch etcher and painter Jan Montyn (1924), whose life has been an almost surreal journey between war and peace, life and death, despair and happiness. Born into a devoutly Protestant family, Jan Montyn fled his claustrophobic village in Holland and voluntary joined the German Navy in 1944 to fight on the Eastern Front. After World War II, he enlisted with the Foreign Legion and fought in the Korean War. Later, he was involved in humanitarian aid missions in Vietnam and Cambodia. As an artist, Jan Montyn is well known all over the world. Hundreds of his prints hang in museums and the homes of private collectors in France, Germany, the United States, Japan and the Netherlands. His oeuvre reflects his lifelong observations and experiences, and captures not only his love for beauty of life and landscape, but also his fascination with the havoc and horror wrought by war. Love Me or Leave Me is a film about the influence of the past on the present. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)