From 1970 to 1973, the American and North Vietnamese delegations met in the greatest secrecy, in the Paris suburbs, to prepare for peace. A dive into history with, as a bonus, extracts from these tough negotiations.
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February 21, 1970, 9:30 a.m., in a quiet street in Choisy-le-Roi. A villa is the scene of a meeting that will change the destiny of the United States and Vietnam. In the greatest secrecy, Richard Nixon's special advisor and Ho Chi Minh's, two diplomats who are completely opposed to each other, discuss a possible peace for the first time. On the one hand, Henri Kissinger, intellectual, professor at Harvard, public man accustomed to the spotlight; on the other, Lê Duc Tho, a resistance fighter tortured by the French, who became one of the executives of the leadership of the Vietnamese Communist Party. As the war intensified, they continued to negotiate for three years. After forty-five secret meetings in three towns in the Paris suburbs, the peace agreements were signed in Paris in January 1973.

In addition to the interest in treating a little-known – and yet essential – aspect of the Vietnam War, this documentary exhumes sound extracts from interviews between Kissinger and Lê Duc Tho. They illustrate the strong tension inherent in these negotiations but also the spirit, the cunning and the maneuvers of the two men. Furthermore, the film gives the floor to Henri Kissinger who agreed to return to this period to give his point of view, necessarily biased but nevertheless very enriching.


Vietnam War - at the heart of secret negotiations
Director: Daniel Roussel
Production: Guavas
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