“Last Days in Vietnam”

There’s an iconic picture that symbolizes the end of the Vietnam War: A helicopter sits on the roof of what most people believe is the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. A long line of people stand on a ladder leading to the roof and a man reaches out to help the first of them aboard. In fact, the image is of an apartment building that housed senior CIA employees. The confusion is a good metaphor for the war, and the chaos as the North Vietnamese rolled towards Saigon after the war officially ended. The new documentary Last Days in Vietnam tries to clarify some of what happened as America scrambled to evacuate the country. We speak to director Rory Kennedy as part of a weeklong series of interviews with the filmmakers behind this year’s Oscar-nominated documentaries.

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