Soldier’s Bones
In the midst of the Vietnam War, between December 1968 and May 1969, American troops carried out the top-secret Operation Speedy Express, which aimed to eliminate Vietcong fighters in the Mekong Delta. The operation was accompanied by excessive violence and claimed thousands of civilian lives. These were war crimes that made the My Lai massacre pale in comparison. The 27-year-old American Newsweek war correspondent Alec Shimkin uncovered the operation in 1971, but strangely enough, his revelations received hardly any attention. When he himself disappeared in Vietnam one day, his story vanished too.
In his new film, Dutch filmmaker Kasper Verkaik (Plaza Man) delves into the deadly aftermath of Speedy Express in the Mekong Delta. He wants to know what happened to the story Shimkin wanted to tell and what the true circumstances are behind Shimkin’s sudden disappearance. The key question is: which parties stand to gain from obscuring the truth?
