After fifty years, the Vietnam War’s first and only Black special operations team reunites, revealing a hidden history and seeking peace through reckoning.
Director: J.M. Harper
Runtime: 99
Fest Year: 2026
In the summer of 1968, six teenagers were sent to Cu Chi, Vietnam. As the first all-Black special operations unit in the war, the 51st Infantry, other soldiers called them the Soul Patrol. Most had volunteered. Lawton Mackey Jr. forged his mother’s signature to enlist at seventeen. Ed Emanuel had never been on a plane. They barely spoke about what happened until Emanuel wrote it down in a memoir 50 years later. J.M. Harper’s film, winner of Sundance’s Directing Award for U.S. Documentary, is built around the team’s reunion. Black-and-white, close-up testimonies, paired with the soldiers’ own Super 8mm combat footage and stylized dramatic sequences. Their wives form their own conversation about what the war did to the men they married. No one properly welcomed them home. This film does. (YF)