The famous 1972 photo shows Phan Thi Kim Phuc running along a road in Vietnam after removing her clothes following a napalm strike. A new documentary disputes who shot the photo but an Associated Press investigation found there wasn’t definitive evidence to change the photographer’s credit.Nick Ut/The Associated Press
It may be the most famous photograph ever taken.
On June 8, 1972, in a small village in southeastern Vietnam, a nine-year-old girl named Phan Thi Kim Phuc was running along the road, screaming and naked, having torn off her burning clothes after a napalm strike by South Vietnamese forces. With one click of a camera, the image, officially called The Terror of War but more widely known as “Napalm Girl,” travelled around the globe via the Associated Press with stunning speed and impact, altering the world’s perspective on the Vietnam War almost overnight.
It also cemented the career of a young Vietnamese-American photographer for the AP named Nick Ut, who would go on to win the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and the 1973 World Press Photo of the Year award.
“I cried when I saw her running,” Mr. Ut would say years later, recalling how he helped Ms. Phuc into a van on its way to the hospital. “If I don’t help her – if something happened and she died – I think I’d kill myself after that.”
Yet, according to the claims made in a stunning new documentary called The Stringer, the countless lives changed by the “Napalm Girl” photo might stem from a misattributed credit.
Directed by Bao Nguyen, The Stringer, which will begin streaming on Netflix on Nov. 28, follows the work of journalists Gary Knight, Fiona Turner, Terri Lichstein and Le Van as they track down the origins of the photograph following a tip from Carl Robinson, a former AP photo editor in Saigon.
In the film, Mr. Robinson says that it was not Mr. Ut who took the photo, but rather a young freelancer (or “stringer”) named Nguyen Thanh Nghe who was also on site, alongside Mr. Ut and a handful of other journalists. The credit change, according to Mr. Robinson, was ordered by Horst Faas, a legend in photojournalism and the AP’s Saigon chief of photos, who died in 2012.
When The Stringer made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this past January, the film’s claims stunned audiences and rocked the photojournalism community. Mr. Nguyen, a seasoned doc filmmaker who has made films on everything from Bruce Lee to pop music, had a similar reaction when he learned of the journalism collective’s investigation in early 2023.
“As a filmmaker, I get a lot of cold e-mails about documentary ideas and concepts, so I was a little hesitant when I got an e-mail from Terri Lichstein saying that they had this story they were exploring in Vietnam but wouldn’t say what the story was,” Mr. Nguyen said in an interview with The Globe and Mail. “And then Terri told me this unbelievable story. Well, I joke that I’m glad it was a phone call and not a Zoom call, because my face was just flabbergasted when I heard it.”
Nguyen Thanh Nghe in The Stringer.Netflix
Mr. Nguyen’s film traces the investigation over months and months as it gradually builds steam, with the journalists tracking down the elusive Mr. Nghe and enlisting the services of an external firm to forensically recreate that fateful day in South Vietnam using everything from archival images to satellite photography. Mr. Robinson is also interviewed in the film, expressing regret that he had buried Mr. Nghe’s credit for so many decades.
“I had heard this rumour about the photo a long time ago. But I received the first e-mail from Carl in December, 2022. I told Fiona, my wife, that this would make a really great written story. But she said we might want to look at it being a film instead,” Mr. Knight said in an interview alongside Mr. Nguyen. “We talked to Carl and thought, okay, he’s a credible witness, but there’s a lot of work to do to make this into a project.”
Ahead of the film’s Sundance premiere, the AP issued a report, conducted over six months, which concluded that the organization “has no reason to believe anyone other than Ut took the photo.”
Five months later, in May, 2025, the AP released a second report that concluded it was “possible Ut took this picture” but that its investigation raised “significant questions … that we may never be able to answer.” That same month, the World Press Photo organization announced that it was suspending Mr. Ut’s attribution to the image, after its own report based on “analysis of location, distance, and the camera used on that day.”
The journalists enlisted a firm to forensically recreate the day the photo was taken.Netflix
Representatives for the AP did not reply to a request for comment from The Globe. Mr. Ut, whose lawyer James Hornstein has called the film “defamatory” and World Press Photo’s decision “deplorable and unprofessional,” did not respond to requests for comment.
Ms. Phuc, who was later granted political asylum in Canada and now is based in Ajax, Ont., has said that she has “no memory of those minutes,” and, as the film’s end credits note, still believes that Mr. Ut took the photo and then took her to the hospital.
After the film’s Sundance screening, at which Mr. Nghe was in the audience alongside Mr. Robinson, Mr. Nguyen has slightly updated the doc to include developments in the investigations conducted by the AP and World Press Photo. But the filmmaking team has still not spoken with Mr. Ut.
“We’ve been very open to talking with Nick; he knows the door is open, we’ve made that very clear. We reached out to him throughout the process of making the film about 16 times, either directly or through mutual friends. But thus far, he has not wanted to talk to us,” Mr. Knight said.
“It’s pretty quiet at the moment. There was a very concerted effort undertaken by prize-winning photographers to try and stop the film from being seen, but that didn’t work. And an intent to make sure the film wasn’t distributed, which didn’t work, either.”
Nguyen Thanh Nghe and Carl Robinson, who in the film claims Mr. Nghe is the one who took the ‘Napalm Girl’ photo.Netflix
For the journalists behind the film, the doc arrives at a pivotal moment for photojournalism, when questions of authorship and authenticity are dominating the discourse.
“The ability of journalists to examine their own profession is really critical to ensure credibility in journalism, to maintain trust with the public. With a story like this, it might be an uncomfortable story for our profession to confront, but nevertheless we have to confront accusations like this head-on,” Mr. Knight said. “If we’re going to hold everyone else in society to account, we have to do so ourselves. Mistakes happen, but it’s how you confront those mistakes that’s really critical.”
However, as debates over artificial intelligence rage in the media, Mr. Nguyen is careful to note that the legitimacy of the “Napalm Girl” photograph itself has never been up for debate.
“I want to make it clear that the authenticity and the impact of the photo is not questioned at all in the film. It’s really about authorship.”