When it comes to Hollywood depicting the horrors of war, many filmmakers do all they can to capture the gritty realism and violence of battle, even though they weren't there to see it in person.

Pierre Schoendoerffer was a war photographer in what was known as Indochina in the early 1950s, and was a prisoner of war at Dien Bien Phu. The experience was, it can be inferred, a defining one for ...