Few photographs have shaped public consciousness quite like The Terror of War – better known globally as Napalm Girl. It is an image that has transcended journalism, becoming a visual shorthand for the human cost of conflict.
And on November 28, Netflix releases "The Stringer: The Man Who Took The Photo", a documentary that promises to peel back layers of doubt, memory, and myth surrounding the moment it was made.
This two-year-long investigation is a chance for us to delve deeper into one of photojournalism's most contested and emotionally charged stories, as renowned conflict photographer Gary Knight and a small team of journalists embark on a quest to trace the real identity of the elusive stringer.
The photograph at the center of a debate was captured on June 8, 1972. It shows nine-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc, fleeing a misdropped South Vietnamese napalm strike, her skin burned, her expression etched forever into our collective memory. The picture won the Pulitzer Prize and World Press Photo of the Year in 1973, and for half of a century, its authorship remained virtually unquestioned.
This all changed in 2024/2025. Headlines resurfacing around the camera used to photograph the scene – long believed to be a Leica M2, and later, challenged to possibly be a Pentax – but more explosively, around the authorship itself.
This release comes on the heels of a different documentary, also titled: "The Stringer", directed by Bao Dguyen. This earlier film set off shockwaves by challenging the authorship of the photograph. It presented evidence suggesting that the image may not have been taken by Pulitzer Prize-winning AP photographer Huỳnh Công "Nick" Út, but instead by Nguyễn Thành Nghệ, a Vietnamese stringer working for AP in 1972. You can read the result of AP's and the World Press Photo's investigations here.
Netflix's "The Stringer: The Man Who Took the Photo" now enters a landscape already rattled by doubt, contradiction, and emotion. What makes this even more intriguing is that its narrative includes a testimony of a former Saigon photo editor, a man who says he has been plagued with a secret related to the image for 52 years.
The Netflix documentary gives us a chance to weigh new testimony against decades of established history, and perhaps to reflect more deeply on the often overlooked contributions of local journalists whose work is frequently buried beneath geopolitical narratives.
Regardless of where you stand on the authorship question – or whether you believe it will ever be fully settled – Napalm Girl remains one of the most influential photographs ever taken.
And on November 28, I'll be glued to the screen. Because "The Stringer: The Man Who Took the Photo" promises to add more layers of understanding to this extraordinary photograph's journey – and this is perhaps the closest we'll ever come to understanding the moment behind the moment that changed everything.
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Read more about the Napalm Girl: Sorry, Leica – iconic 'Napalm Girl' photo may have been taken on a Pentax camera, and The Napalm Girl saga continues: World Press Photo suspends the attribution of 'The Terror of War' to Nick Út.
Check out our guide to the best digital Leica, Nikon, and Pentax cameras.
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