The Vietnam War (Season 1)

The Vietnam War (2017) — watch online on iFILM the landmark documentary series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Ten episodes trace the conflict from the early 1950s through reunification in 1975, drawing on testimony from nearly eighty people: American veterans, anti-war activists, North Vietnamese soldiers, and South Vietnamese civilians who lived through it from opposite ends.

Burns and Novick make no attempt to hand down a verdict. The film's power comes from holding all these contradictory accounts in the same frame — alongside declassified White House recordings of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, and period footage that had rarely been seen on American television. The soundtrack runs through the music of the era: Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bob Dylan, Buffalo Springfield — each track placed where it amplifies rather than decorates.

Broadcast on PBS, the series runs roughly eighteen hours in total. It is not the kind of documentary that summarises — it is the kind that slows down and asks you to sit with complexity. Stream all episodes of The Vietnam War (2017) online on iFILM.