The Stringer: premiere at the Sundance Film Festival
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On 25 January 2025, the documentary The Stringer premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Directed by Bao Nguyen, the film follows a group of journalists as they investigate the attribution of the Napalm Girl photograph, an emblematic image of the Vietnam War and one of the most famous pictures of the twentieth century.
Taken on 8 June 1972, the photograph shows Kim Phuc, then aged nine, naked and severely burned alongside other children fleeing a napalm attack on the Vietnamese village of Trảng Bang, bombed by the South Vietnamese air force. For more than half a century, it has been credited to Nick Ut, a Vietnamese-American photographer with the Associated Press.
The filmmakers asked Index to carry out an independent expert analysis to check whether Nick Ut could actually have taken the photograph. Drawing on dozens of shots taken that day by the various photographers present at the scene, as well as on film footage and historical satellite imagery of the site, Index produced a 3D reconstruction of the sequence of events before and after the moment the photograph was taken.
This expert analysis, together with a presentation of its method and conclusions, is included in the film as a video sequence. The official release date of the documentary The Stringer has not yet been announced.
The film on the Sundance Film Festival website ↗
| Press coverage: ROLLING STONE – Inside the Battle Over ‘Napalm Girl’; 1 August 2025 | THE GUARDIAN – ‘Uncomfortable truths’: controversial film challenges authorship of famous photo; 26 January 2025 | LE MONDE – La photo “la petite fille au napalm” au cœur d’une polémique [The “Napalm Girl” photo at the heart of a controversy]; 26 January 2025 | THE WASHINGTON POST – Controversial doc ‘The Stringer’ investigates famous Vietnam War photo | TELERAMA – Polémique sur la photo de “la petite fille au napalm”: ce que dit “The Stringer”, l’enquête choc diffusée à Sundance [Controversy over the “Napalm Girl” photo: what “The Stringer”, the explosive investigation screened at Sundance, has to say] | THE DAILY BEAST – The Explosive Secret Behind the Most Famous Photo in History; 27 January 2025 | NBC NEWS – A Sundance documentary called ‘The Stringer’ disputes who took AP’s 'napalm girl' photo in Vietnam | ROGER EBERT – Sundance Film Festival 2025: Predators, The Stringer, FOLKTALES; 26 January 2025 | VANITY FAIR – Who Really Took the Famous “Napalm Girl” Photograph?; 26 January 2025 | THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER – ‘The Stringer’ Review: Doc Aims a Piercing Light on the Business of Journalism and the Fog of War; 25 January 2025 | LOS ANGELES TIMES – “The movies worth standing in line for”; 25 January 2025 | VARIETY – “From ‘The Stringer’ to ‘Move Ya Body,’ BIPOC Filmmakers Share the Untold Legacy of Their Communities in Sundance 2025 Documentaries”; 24 January 2025 | DEADLINE DOC TALK – “Sundance Documentary Programmers On This Year’s Standouts Including “Mystery” Film About A World Famous Photograph – Doc Talk Podcast”; 21 January 2025. |