Hot Docs ’03: Kim’s Story (1997)

**½/****
directed by Shelley Saywell

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover This is the story of Kim Phuc, who was napalmed during the Vietnam War and became the subject of an infamous photo that shocked the world. Her life is full enough of incident: Having become a symbol of America's brutality during the war, she was turned into a propaganda instrument by the Vietnamese government and subsequently defected to the west. She remains, however, a committed pacifist and continues to build bridges between herself and veterans–including, in the film's biggest surprise, the pilot who dropped the napalm on her. Alas, the crew that brings her to the screen gets only middling marks. I suppose the film is a passable introduction to Kim Phuc's life, but it lacks the force that a truly creative filmmaker would have brought to it; Shelley Saywell is adept at rattling off the facts but isn't very good at giving them resonance. She's made sort of an EPK for peace, in which we see Kim attend various pacifist and veterans' events but don't get much of a sense for her personality and her beliefs post-Vietnam. It's a skim across her life and actions as opposed to an in-depth study, and it does the job but not much more.