CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Veteran documentarian Rick Preve is bringing his latest film, “A Price We Have to Pay,” to the 39th annual Virginia Film Festival this week, with a Saturday screening of the movie that highlights the disappearance of an Argentinian journalist during the Vietnam war.
The film will be presented as a part of the Festival’s Latinidades series, as well as its showcase of filmmaking in the state of Virginia.
The Argentinian American director is coming off his previous feature, “Sometime, Somewhere,” which focused on the lives of migrant workers from around the world coming to Virginia under different circumstances but united in a common struggle. Preve holds a masters in agronomy and forestry at Virginia Tech.
Preve’s subject for his latest film is the disappearance of Argentinian journalist Ignacio Ezcurra in Saigon in 1968 as the Vietnam War was in its early stages.
He said that the focus was not political but a look into the obscurity of Ezcurra’s death.
“I find it hard to believe that in a war as photographed, filmed, and covered by as many accredited journalists as the Vietnam war, that a tall guy could step off a jeep at the intersection of two streets in Saigon and vanish,” Preve told Cville Right Now.
Ezcurra, the son of the largest newspaper owner in Argentina, was an accomplished journalist already before he went to Saigon in 1968, having covered the Syrian Civil War. He had interviewed important American political figures like Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
The true account of how Ezcurra died has been disputed, and the film’s investigation suggests that the entity responsible for his death was not the Viet Cong, as was widely assumed.
Preve organized three teams of investigators, one in the United States, one in Vietnam, and one in Argentina, to uncover the true story of what happened to Ezcurra, the role the press played in the war, and show the effects that the war had on the country of Vietnam. The prominent journalists featured in the film include Vietnamese journalist and documentarian Lê Vân, who will be attending the film’s world premiere in Charlottesville on Saturday, and Argentinian war correspondent Clara Preve Durrieu, Preve’s niece.
One of the vital clues Preve and his teams leaned on during the investigation was a grainy photograph taken by an unknown Japanese photographer of Ezcurra dead in the street. The Associated Press did not make a note of the photographer’s name on May 8, 1968, when the photo was turned in. To try and follow the trail, the Vietnamese team went to the 50th anniversary commemoration in Saigon hoping that they would find the photographer.
They successfully found the photographer, who provided them with more photographs of Ezcurra he had taken. His photographs were vital in providing context and finding witnesses to his Ezcurra’s death in order to solve the mystery.
Even after the exhaustive investigation, Preve still believes that he does not have the full picture of the circumstances surrounding Ezcurra’s death.
“We definitely think there is something information missing,” Preve said. “We think we may complete that research and perhaps do a sequel to the film.”
“A Price We Have to Pay” plays at the Violet Crown on Saturday at 12:30 p.m., and Preve and Vân will take part in a Q&A session following the film.
