A Noble Films and National Film Board of Canada co-production

A photograph can never capture the whole truth; but for two families, one iconic image will reveal their deepest wartime secrets.

This film includes images or references to extra-judicial executions, a search for human remains, post-traumatic stress disorder, and domestic violence. Viewer discretion is advised.

Short Synopsis

Which is more final, the gun or the camera? Armed with a powerful visual style, Oscar^®-nominated filmmaker Kim Nguyen reveals the elusive connection between two families and one iconic photo: Saigon Execution. Part history, part mystery, Saigon Story confronts the family secrets left in the wake of the Vietnam War, exposing the resilience of survivors and the blurred legacy of wartime memory.

Long synopsis

A woman in Washington state conceals the scars of a brutal family secret. A veteran journalist in Saigon helps two siblings solve a painful wartime mystery. And a photo becomes so iconic that it takes on a life of its own.

Spanning decades and continents, these remarkable accounts collide in Oscar^®-nominated filmmaker Kim Nguyen’s Saigon Story: Two Shootings in the Forest Kingdom. Armed with a powerful visual style, Nguyen reveals the intimate connection between two families and Eddie Adams’ Saigon Execution—an image that forever changed the world’s perception of the Vietnam War.

Shining a light on the long and sometimes surprising road to healing, Nguyen carefully uncovers the hidden truths of war, family and photography itself. What ultimately emerges is a kaleidoscope of humanity, one exploding with beauty, pain and the complex patterns of wartime memories.

Written by historian Phi Van Nguyen, Associate Professor, Université de Saint-Boniface, Department of Humanities and Social Science.

Saigon Story does not seek to explain the Vietnam War or how it was both an international war and a civil war. Some historical context for the photograph that serves as the starting point for the film may, therefore, be useful to viewers. Below is a timeline of key events before, during and after the conflict, followed by additional context for some of the terms used in the film.

Dates & Timelines

September 2, 1945 – Ho Chi Minh proclaims the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). Minh is President and many communists hold important positions. Nationalists protest that they will be unfairly represented in the future legislative assembly. In July 1946, despite the fact that French armed forces have returned to Vietnam, the DRV launches a wave of repression against nationalist leaders and newspapers. The civil war between communists and nationalists begins.

December 19, 1946 – The war has already begun in the South, but negotiations to define the DRV’s independence within the Indochinese Federation and the French Union are still underway. When they reach a standstill, confrontations between the DRV and the French erupt in Lang Son and Haiphong. The Battle of Hanoi on December 19, 1946, marks the beginning of the war of decolonization. The Viet Minh retreat to the countryside to continue the fight.

July 20, 1954 – Over the years, the war shifts from a war of decolonization into a civil war and a frontline of the Cold War. A new state, the Associated State of Vietnam, created in 1949, poses as an alternative to the DRV. The United States and Western allies support the Associated State of Vietnam, whereas Chinese and Soviet communists provide assistance to the DRV. The partition decided by the Geneva Conference of July 20, 1954, allows the French to withdraw and cools East-West tensions. However, the ceasefire does not end the civil war. Both states claim to be the rightful leader of the entire Vietnamese population, but the North is assigned to the DRV, while the South falls under the administration of the nationalists, becoming the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) in 1955.

December 1959 – The war resumes. Communists in the South suffer from constant repression coming from the government based in Saigon. They misread an instruction asking them to keep the “political struggle” alive and launch a general insurrection in late 1959, culminating in January 1960 (Dong Khoi). After holding entire villages in the countryside for weeks, Hanoi abandons the pledge for “peaceful coexistence” between the East and the West, and in December 1960 it creates the National Liberation Front (NLF), a broad movement comprising various elements (not only communists) opposed to Saigon. Infiltrations from the North through the Ho Chi Minh Trail begin.

1962–1964 – The war escalates with a series of insurrections and counter-insurrections and President John F. Kennedy’s decision to triple the number of US military advisors in Vietnam in 1962. Ngo Dinh Diem, the President of the RVN, is assassinated on November 2, 1963. Successive cabinets fail to stabilize the government as the insurrection escalates in the countryside, and the US also experiences a period of uncertainty following Kennedy’s assassination later that month.

August 1964–March 1965 – August 4, 1964: the Johnson administration claims US ships have been torpedoed twice by the DRV. Congress grants the President the power to take all necessary measures to protect countries protected by the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, which includes South Vietnam. Bombing of the North begins. After being duly elected President, Johnson sends troops to Vietnam; the first troops land in Da Nang in March 1965.

January 30–31, 1968 – The Tet Offensive: the NLF launches an attack on all towns and cities, including the US embassy in Saigon, where they were able to breach the compound and hold it for a few hours. The event is widely reported, including by primetime television news programs. The counter-offensive is brutal. The execution of Nguyen Van Lem, captured in Eddie Adams’ photograph, happens when RVN and US troops regain control of Saigon. But the counter-offensive takes several weeks, and the armed fighting is fierce, especially in Central Vietnam. This is also when the My Lai massacre takes place, although the public learns about it years later.

May 1968–January 1973 – The United States, the RVN, the DRV and the new Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam (PRG), created to rule over zones controlled by the NLF, negotiate in Paris. On January 27, 1973, parties reach a ceasefire that stipulates US troops must leave Vietnam, Vietnamese armed forces on both sides must stop the fighting and a coalition body to organize elections must be created. War resumes shortly afterwards.

April 30, 1975 – After launching an offensive in the spring, communist troops and NLF fighters take control of Saigon. An RVN general submits an unconditional surrender. The war ends.

April 25, 1976 – The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is proclaimed on April 26, 1976, reuniting, de facto, the North and the South, without complying with the political framework set by the Paris Peace Accords. Many political and religious leaders and intellectuals are arrested, and some die in prison. Almost everyone must attend political re-education classes, but the degree to which people must participate varies. Some can attend one class whereas others, mostly civil servants and soldiers of the former regime, must repeat classes and sometimes work in labour camps in the North, far away from their families. Even once released from re-education camps, many face administrative hurdles that hamper their prospects of finding jobs or housing. Vietnam experiences a serious economic crisis and increasing tensions with its neighbours, Cambodia and China. The government launches reforms to abolish small capitalism in late 1978. After an initial wave of departures in April 1975, thousands of people, including former NLF members, leave the country in dangerous conditions.

December 1986 – The Communist Party announces a series of reforms called the Doi Moi, abandoning a planned economy to allow the introduction of a market economy, movement within the country and the opening of borders. The Doi Moi does not include political reforms that would permit other political parties to be formed, freedom of expression and reunion, etc. Bloggers, journalists and activists are still being arrested to this day.

Terminology

It’s important to be aware that many of the words used in discussions of the Vietnam War tend to oversimplify reality or reproduce a political judgement. Below, some context and explanatory notes have been provided for five widely used terms that are mentioned in the film.

Viet Cong

The word is often used to refer to NLF combatants. It is a contraction formed by combining the words “Viet Nam” (Vietnamese) and “Cong San” (Communist), but the intent was to dehumanize the enemy, and the word was initially used as an insult. The term “NLF combatants” is more accurate.

Puppet Army

Communist sources often refer to the people working for Saigon’s government or army as “puppets,” implying they served American interests in Vietnam. However, Vietnamese nationalists had their own political vision. Many soldiers were conscripted and, therefore, did not choose to fight; but others volunteered for the army, the government or youth groups, etc., and some families fought against Communism for generations. Many of them welcomed the United States’ support, but many also criticized its patronizing attitude, and especially Nixon’s rapprochement with the People’s Republic of China in 1972. It is therefore important to avoid using words that suggest subordination to American interests, such as “paper army,” “puppet government” or “lackeys,” and to instead use the official terms for political or military authorities, such as the Republic of Vietnam or the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.

Red Communists

Some nationalists tended to see all their opponents as communists, but this was not the case. One must distinguish between the party, the front and the state. The party’s strategy was to attract a wide range of people opposed to Saigon by calling on the population to fight for national independence—not a socialist revolution. However, many people who rallied to the front realized that victory did not bring political representation of multiple interests. Once unified, Vietnam became a one-party state, which prompted many Vietnamese, including former members of the NLF, to leave the country.

One should also avoid putting all communists under the same “red” blanket, because there were deep divisions among them. Moscow and Beijing competed against each other to lead the communist world. While Vietnam managed to remain neutral in the competition between the two, Hanoi eventually leaned towards the Soviet Union, which was the main cause of another war in Vietnam that saw the country oppose its neighbours, China and Cambodia, in 1978–1979.

In lieu of overly broad terms like “communists” or “red communists,” it is therefore more accurate to use the official name of the entities in question: the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (1945–1976), the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (after 1976), the National Liberation Front (a broad coalition opposed to the government in Saigon), the Lao Dong Party or the Communist Party, the People’s Army of Vietnam (army of the DRV), the People’s Liberation Army (army of the NLF and the PRG).

North Vietnamese

It is often suggested that the North Vietnamese unanimously supported their government, and therefore Communism, but the reality is more complex. For example, many nationalists from the North departed for the South after 1954, when the country was partitioned into the DRV and the RVN. Despite living in the South for decades, they still considered themselves to be northerners.

South Vietnamese

It would also be inaccurate to assert that all South Vietnamese were opposed to Communism or to the government in Hanoi. Many communists were, in fact, from the South. The war resumed in 1959 precisely because these southern communists decided to rebel against Saigon. It was only later that Hanoi decided to support them by creating the NLF.

According to the United States, the North had invaded the South and therefore an American military intervention was warranted. But the fighting started in the South, by southern communists against Saigon.

In Saigon, in 2024, a son and daughter set out to free the soul of their father, which has been trapped in limbo for over 50 years. On the other side of the planet, a woman seeks to understand why her ex-husband tried to kill her five decades ago. Connecting the two is a photograph that changed history forever.

I was immediately, viscerally drawn to this project. There is something intensely moving about the two main stories we decided to focus on—how the extraordinary collides with the ordinary, and the way in which people navigate trauma and find ways to thrive and move on.

Over the last couple of years, I came to realize that I wish to create documentaries that capture unique worlds, characters and situations.  I also yearn to be witness to journeys of liberation from burdens past. In this documentary, we had the extraordinary chance of capturing a profound spiritual healing that was 56 years in the making!

As a Canadian of Vietnamese descent (my father is Vietnamese, my mother Canadian), the project speaks to me on many levels. I grew up hearing stories about the war, about the hardships of exile, the scars that heal but don’t go away. Saigon Story is a way for me to delve into that material, to try and understand and come to grips with it. How the psyches of Vietnamese people have been affected by war and exile, how they have overcome it and built new lives for themselves, how the wounds of the past still haunt them. One of the biggest gifts this project gave me was to discover just how effervescent Vietnamese culture is today, how people—especially the youth and the elders—still have immense physical proximity with each other, far from our growing solitudes of North America.

At the core of this film, I think I wanted to shine light on just how much our lives are built by chance collisions between our personal journeys and overarching moments in history. The film matches this randomness of life in some way: it is in no way a Ken Burns, all-encompassing documentary (I have enormous respect for Ken Burns). I would say it is more like me walking alongside an old and beautiful cathedral with my camera, then discovering a few of those unique, hidden gargoyles that tell a unique story, and filming them in front of this monumental historical set piece that acts as a backdrop to those personal stories that were, in part, chance encounters.