Last Days In Vietnam Receives Oscar Nomination

“We did it, we did it” exclaimed an enthusiastic text message from Rory Kennedy to SFF Board Chairman, Mark Famiglio early Thursday morning, “And we opened in Sarasota!”  (Nominated for BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE!)

   Rory Kennedy and her family, close friends of the festival are ecstatic and so are we! Congratulations to Rory and to everyone on the very deserving  Last Days of Vietnam team!

Last Days in Vietnam Opened the 2014 Sarasota Film Festival on April 4th last year with the Sarasota Vietnam Brotherhood Color Guard before and an amazing Q&A after, featuring 4 Star Marine Corps General John F. Kelly and Captain of the U.S.S. Kirk, Paul Jacobs.

In the final weeks of the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese Army began its march to Saigon. In the face of this impending invasion, many South Vietnamese sought refuge at the US embassy, hoping to escape. There, American soldiers and diplomats confronted a difficult dilemma; whether to obey White House orders to evacuate U.S. citizens only–or to risk treason and save the lives of as many South Vietnamese citizens as they could. Director Rory Kennedy (ETHEL) returned to the Sarasota Film Festival with her stunning new documentary LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM, chronicling the desperate final days in Saigon from the point of view of the Americans who were on the ground and overseeing the evacuation. LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM is an unforgettable story of heroism and compromise in the face of impossible odds, a film that is at once profoundly moving and an indispensible chronicle of the end of the Vietnam War.