In the courtrooms, almost 54 years later, it will be decided whose hand pulled the famous, historical from his who has remained known as “her girl”.
More specifically, according to what was announced, the Tarascon court in France will hear in 2027 a defamation lawsuit filed by Associated Press photographer Nick Utt against Netflix and its documentary “The Stringer,” which attributes the authorship of the historic photo to an independent journalist (stringer in English).
The court set the schedule for upcoming hearings in this case, planning to consider the merits of the case in February and March 2027.
Taken on June 8, 1972, this photo, showing a Vietnamese girl running naked down a street after being bombed with napalm in Trang Bang, South Vietnam, caused a worldwide sensation, going down in historical memory as one of the symbols of the horrors of that war.
Utt, the Pulitzer and the Netflix production
The black-and-white photograph earned then-22-year-old Vietnamese-American photojournalist Nick Ut a Pulitzer Prize and a World Press Photo Award in 1973.
But the January 2025 release of the documentary “The Stringer,” directed by Bao Nguyen and produced by the VII Foundation, has called into question who the man was who took that photo.
In the film, multiple witnesses who were present during the bombing claim that the photo was taken by a Vietnamese freelance journalist, Nien Hin Ni, before it was sold to the Associated Press.
According to the documentary, which identified this freelance journalist (the “stringer”), the agency preferred to attribute the photo’s authorship to Nick Utt, one of its employees who also witnessed the bombing.
Doubts about Ut’s role in the incident
An investigation by the French NGO INDEX also says that Nick Utt’s position in relation to his account and the camera used do not match any known evidence of the photo being taken.
The documentary also claims that Ut’s role in rescuing the photographed girl, Kim Pook, was exaggerated.
The photojournalist, whose reputation is largely based on this photo, strongly denies these accusations and confirmed in a Facebook post in January 2025 that he was the sole creator of the photo.
He is seeking €100,000 in damages and €20,000 in legal costs in a French court – production company VII Foundation is based in Arles – according to the New York Times.
The court set a bail of 6,000 euros, which had to be paid within two months. Netflix’s lawyer, Buffett, declined to comment to AFP.
In May 2025, World Press Photo suspended official attribution of the photo to Nick Utt.
The AP, for its part, confirmed, after an internal investigation, that it would continue to credit Nick Utt for the photo, while acknowledging that “it is impossible to prove exactly what happened that day, on the street or in the office, more than 45 years ago.”
