Vietnam will be free is a chamber film that tells of a war, of memory that fades, of a challenge against the passing of time.
Two shoeboxes full of 6x6 photographic negatives, forgotten in an old wardrobe in the attic for over fifty years, have been unexpectedly rediscovered. In 1964-65 the directors Lino Del Fra and Cecilia Mangini lived for three months in North Vietnam at war with the U.S.A. to carry out inspections for a documentary film about the struggle of that people determined to conquer unity and independence. From the border with China to the border with the South, the US-based and actually occupied by the Americans, they explored the cities, ports, countries, rice fields, and war fronts. In an attempt to curb this resistance, in the South the Americans set fire to the forests with the napalm and in the North began to make land burnt with carpet bombings. Lino and Cecilia were repatriated together with the many international delegations and all the foreigners present in Hanoi. Those American bombs also hit their film, which was no longer realized ... but Cecilia Mangini has made a great photographic report, still partly unpublished. That war, that resistance, that people in arms relives through photos, writings, memories and memory lapses in a documentary titled Le Vietnam sera libre. It is the same title that was supposed to have the film created in 1965.