L.A. Times Short Docs has acquired distribution rights to the OSCAR® Shortlisted award-winning documentary short film ON HEALING LAND, BIRDS PERCH by first-time director Naja Phạm Lockwood and produced by Julian Cautherley . In July 2025, the film had its international premiere at the Doc Edge New Zealand Film Festival where it won the Best International Documentary Award and played at more than 20 plus festivals and special screenings, garnering numerous jury prizes, audience awards and critical acclaim.
ON HEALING LAND, BIRDS PERCH is a powerful testament to how the scars of war impact lives even decades after the war ends. Now fifty years after the end of the Vietnam War, one image still symbolizes how this war is remembered: the Associated Press Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner during the 1968 Tet Offensive. Reproduced and debated for decades, this photo has become an icon of America’s most divisive war. But that single, frozen frame cannot hold the full story.
While the film centers on the Vietnam War, it serves as a poignant reminder that while conflicts change, the human experience of war and the difficult path to healing remain tragically similar, making its themes incredibly pertinent today with the ongoing struggles and humanitarian crises in places such as Ukraine, Myanmar, Sudan, and Venezuela. This documentary provides an important and vital perspective on war’s lasting impact and the universal quest for peace and understanding.
“I am proud that our film has been selected to be part of L.A. Times Short Docs” states director Phạm Lockwood. “This is the obvious platform and a great partner to provide public access and debut the film. Southern California, especially Orange County, has the largest Vietnamese American community outside of Vietnam. It is a key location for understanding the war’s aftermath and rebuilding lives, which resonates with the film’s themes of intergenerational trauma, memory, healing and reconciliation after fifty years. The film continues to act as a catalyst for difficult conversations between different generations about inherited trauma that was previously left unspoken on all sides of the Vietnam War. The documentary tells the remarkable stories behind that infamous photo, while acting as a portal into the ‘varied carols’ (to borrow from Walt Whitman) of trauma and the American journey.”
ON HEALING LAND, BIRDS PERCH is the first documentary from a Vietnamese/born director that explores the continuing aftershocks of the Vietnam War from the perspectives of both sides of the war: North Vietnamese who live in Vietnam today and South Vietnamese who are the Vietnamese diaspora including Vietnamese Americans alive today. By presenting voices from all sides of the conflict, it illustrates that “no one wins in war” and highlights the common human experience of loss and the capacity for renewal. The film confronts the enduring scars of war, the resilience of refugees rebuilding their lives in America, and the urgent parallels with today’s global refugee crises—at a time when the politics of immigration are more fraught than ever.
“ON HEALING LAND, BIRDS PERCH offers a rare and deeply human reexamination of a photograph that has long shaped how the world remembers the Vietnam War,” said L.A. Times Executive Editor Terry Tang. “This film carries particular resonance here in Southern California, home to the largest Vietnamese community outside Vietnam. It’s a privilege to showcase this powerful story of war, trauma and survival in the 4th season of L.A. Times Short Docs.”
ON HEALING LAND, BIRDS PERCH will debut on February 2 for free on Los Angeles Times ’ YouTube channel and latimes.com/shortdocs , as part of the L.A. Times Short Docs series.
ON HEALING LAND, BIRDS PERCH is presented by LA Times Studios; directed by Naja Phạm Lockwood, produced by Julian Cautherley, shot by Carmen Delaney, edited by Wesley Lipman with music by Dylan Trần and executive produced by Geralyn Dreyfous, Don Young, Judy Korin, Lan Cao, Scott Anderson, Jim and Susan Swartz, and Larry H Miller and Gail Miller Family Foundation . Executive producers for LA Times Studios include Terry Tang, Anna Magzanyan and Jason Spingarn-Koff.