STRINGER, THE
(director: Bao Nguyen; screenwriters: Terri Lichstein, Fiona Turner, Gary Knight, Graham, Taylor; cinematographers: Andrew Yuyi Truong, Bao Nguyen, Ray Lavers; editors: Graham Taylor; music: Gene Back; cast: Gary Knight; Runtime: 100; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Terri Lichstein, Fiona Turner; XRM Media; 2025-in English, Vietnamese)
“This historical doc that questions who really took the most significant war photo of the Vietnam War.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Vietnamese-American filmmaker Bao Nguyen (“The Greatest Night in Pop”/”Be Water”) efficiently directs this historical doc that questions who really took the most significant war photo of the Vietnam War.
It covers the story of Nick Út, the 21-year-old Vietnamese photographer and stringer for the Associated Press, who took on 6/8/72 in Trang Bang, the most famous photo of the Vietnam War, “The Napalm Girl.” A photo that made it possible for him to win the Pulitzer Prize. The photo made people think more about the insanity of the war when seeing the nine-year-old Vietnamese village girl, PhanThi Kim Phuc, covered with flames on her back and running naked down the street, which played a part in public opinion ending the war.
The screenwriters Terri Lichstein, Fiona Turner, Gary Knight, and Graham Taylor dig hard to try and get their research right.
The Brit photojournalist Gary Knight goes to a lot of trouble to check out the allegations that the credited photographer was not the one who took the napalm picture seen all over the world. For proof of this, Knight hires a French team to recreate the photo scene and investigate the photo shot over a two-year period. The documentary claims without having conclusive proof that the photograph was taken by Nguyen Thanh Nghe, a freelance photographer, who contributed photos to the AP. It’s quite possible that the Stringer was the gentle and not the pushy photographer who got the credit. Nghe is still around and is in his early 90s.
The AP has challenged the filmmakers claims to “The Stringer,” and Nick Út has threatened to take legal action against the filmmakers.
The film deserves to be seen for its valid search for historical truth, but at this point its findings really hasn’t affected me as I suppose it should. Though I believe the filmmakers got the story right, and AP lied that it was their stringer who took the famous shot because they were more interested in taking a bow for getting the prized photo than in telling the truth.
It played at the Sundance Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 2/16/2025 GRADE: B
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