Photojournalist Nick Út has filed a defamation lawsuit in France against Netflix and Gary Knight, producer of The Stringer. The documentary, directed by Bao Nguyen, alleged that The Terror of War, a famous photograph of a young girl, naked and screaming in pain after a napalm attack during the Vietnam War, was taken by Nguyen Thanh Nghe and not by Út.
The photo has been credited to Út ever since it was first published in 1972, though the documentary’s evidence to the contrary is compelling. The film relies heavily on the word of a single Associated Press whistleblower, though digital mapping of the landscape at the moment the picture was taken places Út too far away from Kim Phúc, the girl in the photo.