Les Fantômes du Tonkin

June 1955. One year after the battle of Dien Bien Phu, Captain Paul Belmont is sent alone to find the graves of the soldiers who died on the battlefield. His mission was supposed to last a fortnight, but he stayed for a month. Faced with inclement weather and hostile terrain, he identified eight of the thousands of remains buried in the soil of Dien Bien Phu. Based on the report written by the captain on his return, Les Fantômes du Tonkin recounts the odyssey of a lone man in the land of the dead, and resurrects the memory of the lost soldiers of the Indochina War. By recounting their destinies 70 years later, with the help of archive images and personal documents, Patrick Jeudy opens the Book of the Dead and pays tribute to all the forgotten combatants of the French army’s last great battle.