It is one of the most famous photos in history. In 1968, two days after the Tet Offensive, South Vietnamese General Loan was photographed executing Captain Lēm of the invading Vietcong with a single shot to the head. It was a brutal act that was captured on camera by Eddie Adams, who subsequently won a Pulitzer Prize for the image. The photograph was subsequently credited with galvanizing anti-war protests across the US and the world.
“That photo was taken at the very height of the Johnson administration, at the very height of the Vietnam War,” says director Naja Pham Lockwood, whose powerful On Healing Land, Birds Perch is a contender within the Academy Award Short Doc category.
“For the Vietnamese, it was really the definition of the civil war. It was a Vietnamese brother shooting another Vietnamese brother,” she underlines to BDE. “I wanted to tell the stories behind that photo.”
Those stories are indeed tragic, not least in terms of the traumatic effect the execution continues to have on the offspring of the two men we see in the image. June, the daughter of General Loan, knew only a loving father, not a cold-blooded assassin, a man who fled to the US in 1975 where he opened a restaurant. But the photograph followed him Stateside, and deportation proceedings were brought against him. It was only after these were dropped by President Carter that Joan could feel any sense of peace.
Loan and Thōng are the children of the executed Captain Lēm and for whom, for many years, the appalling image was the only impression of him that they had. To this day, they have not been able to locate his remains. The headstone that commemorates their father stands above an empty grave. Only recently was a new image of him discovered, which thankfully could be placed on the headstone.
Huan, meanwhile, was the sole survivor of a family massacre, allegedly perpetrated by Captain Lēm two days previously, during the Tet Offensive that coincided with Vietnamese New Year in 1968. Huan’s father was a lieutenant colonel in the South Vietnamese army. He was beheaded during the attack. Huan’s mother and six siblings were also murdered. It is thought by many that this was the reason for Lēm’s later execution by General Loan.
All his life, Huan has felt a profound sense of guilt, as he believes he brought bad fortune upon his family on the morning of the massacre. With an uncle, he later made his way to the United States where, many years later, he became the first Vietnamese American to achieve the rank of rear admiral in the US Navy.
In Pham Lockwood’s film, each of these characters has, for the first time, chosen to describe publicly the intense emotions that the photo continues to provoke, and the impact it still has on their lives, some 50-plus years later.
“As you can see…no-one wins in war,” she tells BDE of the tragic burden that each protagonist must bear. “All sides lose. And not only that, it takes many generations to move beyond the war.”
In 1975, at the age of seven, Pham Lockwood fled the country with her parents for the US, after the fall of Saigon. Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, she only ever saw the Vietnam War as presented through the parochial prism of American army veterans or US-based conscientious objectors. She never saw anything in the media about the pain of the folks back in Vietnam, or that of the diaspora who had escaped to the US.
“My parents came. They were the last generation from South Vietnam,” she tells BDE. “My father was a lawyer…He came really empty-handed as did most of his colleagues… I think [it was] very similar to the Jewish circumstances of World War II. I think these families came with so much trauma. At least our family did. My parents never spoke about the war. We never grew up talking about the war or their pains. I think because it was too traumatic for them.”
“I wanted to bring that out. And I think it has so many repercussions and so much relevance also for today,” Pham Lockwood adds. “Whether it’s the Vietnam War, whether it’s Ukraine, whether it’s in Israel and Palestine, it’s really the civilians [who suffer}…It’s really the women and children, as Admiral Huan eloquently said, who we should think about, and who are hurt the most in war.” For these children, “intergenerational trauma” is an ongoing factor in their lives, she adds.
The film was selected for scores of international festivals in 2025, winning, among other prizes, the Best International Short Film Award: Doc Edge New Zealand which qualified it for Oscar consideration. At all screenings, whether in the US or internationally, the film has resonated deeply with audiences.
“Every single film festival, people would stand up and say, ‘it’s almost like when JFK was shot. I remember when I first saw that photo,’” Pham Lockwood tells BDE. “People remember it, whether they were five years old or whether they were 20 years old…Also, I think, the Vietnam War was the first war that came into the living rooms of not only America, but I think also worldwide.”
On Healing Land, Birds Perch is one of a number of films in Oscar contention about the legacy of Vietnam. Other documentaries include Child Of Dust by Polish director Weronika Mliczewska, and Christopher Radcliff’s We Were The Scenery, which was produced and written by Cathy Linh Che, herself the daughter of Vietnamese refugees.
“I think we’re finally having the maturity, both in age, but also in terms of feeling as though our voices matter, I think, and we want to tell these stories that our parents were unable to tell,” Pham Lockwood says.
“I’m getting emotional because I think our parents were so paralysed [because] they just wanted to survive in America. I can’t talk for Cathy’s family, but for so many Vietnamese/American families, their parents came and they were already in some ways broken. And they were just trying to live to survive. And I think they were also so traumatised about losing their country. But I think we’re finally having feelings that we have a voice.”
The experience of making the film has been an emotional rollercoaster, Pham Lockwood further confides to BDE. “My trauma is nothing compared to our characters in the film, but it’s been one of the hardest journeys, even though it’s a short film. I have been a producer and an executive producer for 12 years. I’ve done dozens of films. But this journey of making this short film has been one of the most emotional, but also meaningful journeys for me as a filmmaker and as a daughter of that last generation of South Vietnam.”
