Heroes

In April 1975 -- despite a ceasefire agreement -- the North Vietnamese communists took Saigon and the world by surprise, mounting an offensive that ousted the South Vietnamese government. This enlightening documentary recounts the last two years of America's military engagement in the country and the U.S. role in Saigon's fall. Interviews with former National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese officers provide context.

Over the period of 25 years the director met General Võ Nguyên Giáp, a legendary hero of Vietnam’s independence wars, a number of times. She was the first American who entered the home of the “Red Napoleon”. The fruit of this friendship is a film, personal and politically involved at the same time. Travelling across the country and talking to important figures as well as ordinary people, the director finds out more about her roots and offers the audience a unique perspective on Vietnam’s present and past.

"From Mexico to Vietnam: A Chicano Story" is an inspiring documentary that chronicles the life of Jesus S. Duran, a Mexican immigrant who became a decorated U.S. Army soldier during the Vietnam War. Born in Juarez, Mexico, Duran moved to the United States as a child and enlisted in the Army in 1968. On April 10, 1969, while serving as an M-60 machine gunner with Company E, 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), he displayed extraordinary bravery by rescuing several wounded comrades during an intense enemy ambush in Tay Ninh, Vietnam. His valorous actions led to a posthumous Medal of Honor by President Barack Obama. Directed by Andrés Gallegos, the film delves into Duran's personal journey, his family's migration from Mexico, and the broader impact of the Vietnam War on the Chicano and Latino communities.

A portrait of the diverse opinions of Chicagoans as they reflect on the general state of affairs in America, the war in Vietnam, social and racial conflict, freedom and personal liberty, happiness, and social justice. Ratamata was made by future Tom Palazzolo collaborator Kreines when he was 16 years old, and was an award winner at the Young Chicago Filmmakers Festival.

A U.S. Navy Commander Jeremiah Denton leading a plane sortie into North Vietnam was shot down and captured as a POW. For 8 years of his life, he was a prisoner at Hanoi Hilton where he and other POWs were tortured. In a press conference, being forced by the North Vietnamese to say he was being treated well he blinked out the letters TORTURE in Morse code.

The untold stories of six Australian army nurses who served at the only Australian field hospital in the Vietnam War.

Jacqueline Lundquist's father, Donald C. Lundquist, served in Vietnam in 1967-68. While there, he wrote hundreds of letters and recorded many hours of audio tapes that he sent to his wife and daughter. A mere months after returned from the war, he died. Jacqueline was barely 5 years old. Her mother gave her the letters and audio tapes in her teens, but she didn't read them until the summer of 1997 when she was 7 months pregnant with her son, Sam. She was 34. That set her on a journey of getting to know her dad and retracing his footsteps in Vietnam. She ultimately befriended a North Vietnamese soldier who had fought opposite her father. His family had also kept all the letters he had written back to his wife and daughter. This is their contrasting yet similar story.

American Experience looks at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago where Vice President Hubert Humphrey won his party's nomination for president amid massive civil unrest and violence perpetrated by Chicago Police and anti-Vietnam War protesters.

Trang Bang, South Vietnam, 8 June 1972. The air force mistakenly drops bombs on a temple that houses civilians. Among the group of journalists witnessing the drama, the young photographer Nick Ut realizes, on that day, the photo of his life. In her goal, a naked little girl who tries to escape the flames that devour her. This photo that embodies the hell of Vietnam has gone around the world; it continues every day, for 50 years, to haunt the life of Kim Phuc, now "the little girl in the napalm".

She was once as famous as Jackie O—and then she tried to take down a President. Martha Mitchell was the unlikeliest of whistleblowers: a Republican wife who was discredited by Nixon to keep her quiet. Until now.

The story of the resistance of the people of the Vinh Linh area of Vietnam which was heavily bombed by the United States during the Vietnamese War. (Note: The film crew itself was bombed; three crew members passed away and chief cameraman was heavily injured. The director re-shot the destroyed film albeit in shortened form.)

In the gathering dusk of 18 August 1966, 108 young, inexperienced Australian and NZ soldiers are separated and surrounded, fighting for their lives, holding off an overwhelming force of 2,500 battle-hardened Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers. And, in the pouring rain, amid the mud and shattered trees of a rubber plantation called Long Tan, with their ammunition running out and another Vietnamese battalion massing for the final assault, the digger's situation seemed hopeless. Long Tan is the true story of ordinary boys who became extraordinary men.

Push-ups to the rhythm of a metronome, a meter counting backward from 100; three words are shouted time and again: “dog – pig – monkey”.

The story of U.S. fighter pilots shot down over North Vietnam who became POWs for up to 8 and a half years.

Looking back on the creation of the Vietnam Memorial, this Emmy-nominated documentary chronicles the controversy surrounding the monument's construction and touches on the history of the polarizing war that inspired it. Fueled by the vision of Vietnam veteran Jan Scruggs and brought to life by then-fledgling designer Maya Lin, the memorial would eventually become the nation's most visited monument. But its success was a hard-fought victory.

Real-life letters written by American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines during the Vietnam War to their families and friends back home. Archive footage of the war and news coverage thereof augment the first-person "narrative" by men and women who were in the war, some of whom did not survive it.

Born with cystic fibrosis, 28 year old Ethan Rice faces his demise with a dark sense of humour and more concern about what his passing will mean to those he leaves behind than for himself.

Ho Chi Minh spent decades trying to lead Vietnam to independence. In the summer of 1966, the United States found itself in a war it couldn't win, against an enemy it didn't understand. For the Americans, it was a war against Communism. But for the Vietnamese, it was a war to break free from centuries of foreign oppression. At this pivotal moment in their history, they were led by one man who would stop at nothing to free his people. They called him Uncle Ho. To the rest of the world, he was Ho Chi Minh. Millions of Vietnamese would pay the price for Ho Chi Minh's vision of a free Vietnam. A vision that was as bold as it was unbreakable.

An anti-war film about the personal suffering behind the hard statistics, which show that more than four million Vietnamese died during the Vietnam War, as opposed to 58,000 Americans. We hear South and North Vietnamese, including émigrés to the United States, describing how huge numbers of friends met their deaths, caught as they were between government forces, the Vietcong, and the Americans; how political boundaries divided not only the country, but also families; how mothers deserted their children because their fathers were American soldiers; and how the war cruelly lingers on long after hostilities ceased, in the lives of children born crippled by chemical weapons.

The events of the film occur during the initial implementation of President Nixon's policy of Vietnamization, which called for US troops to turn over the war effort to the South Vietnamese Army. Caught in that transition, Firebase Kate receives no support from the South Vietnamese troops in the area, leaving them severely outmanned and outgunned, and in imminent danger of being overrun. Their only option is a desperate late night escape and evasion through a jungle filled with NVA soldiers.