Still from The Stringer.

The Stringer is an investigation into the authorship of The Terror of War, sometimes known as “Napalm Girl,” one of the most recognizable photographs of the 20th century. The film is directed by Bao Nguyen (The Greatest Night in Pop) and screens as part of the Premieres section at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
Graham Taylor, who worked with Nguyen on Be Water, again serves as editor for The Stringer. Below he discusses balancing the multiple disciplines that informed the film and prioritizing evidential footage over salacious material.
See all responses to our annual Sundance editor interviews here.
Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job?
Taylor: My previous experience of investigative filmmaking with the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK, coupled with more recent feature doc and independent films, meant I was a good fit for the team who were looking for a strong editor to complete the production. Having been the editor on Be Water with director Bao Nguyen, with its success at Sundance 2020, also helped clarify the ambitions for the project and meant we could hit the ground running in terms of a working relationship.
Filmmaker: In terms of advancing your film from its earliest assembly to your final cut, what were your goals as an editor? What elements of the film did you want to enhance, or preserve, or tease out or totally reshape?
Taylor: My aim for the early part of the edit was really to extrude and weave together the strands of the film—contemporary unfolding narrative and historical testimonial—along with organizing the resonances of the subject matter into a coherent and unified tone, all while also seeking to ensure all possible avenues open to us in terms of the direction the story could still take were maximized. The spectrum of experience within the team was both broad and deep, from journalism, photography, to conflict zones and the ethical considerations of majority world storytelling, and my role was to try to combine best practice in all these fields to forge a robust and satisfying narrative.

Filmmaker: How did you achieve these goals? What types of editing techniques, or processes, or feedback screenings allowed this work to occur?
Taylor: I just got sucked into the material and asked a lot of questions while the stronger themes evolved organically from organizing the structure. It was clear from very early that the delicate balance we would need to strike was not a cynical or salacious perspective, remembering at all times the delicate sensitivities at play, and we sought to present the various perspectives in their fullest possible sense to best serve as testament to the events depicted in the film.
Filmmaker: As an editor, how did you come up in the business, and what influences have affected your work?
Taylor: I was drawn to independent filmmaking in my teens through the counterculture I saw in skateboarding films, exchanged like contraband via VHS and VHS copying, and which inspired an instant urge to act, to create and to rebel. As I learned about cinema and understood how these urges could be refined and exploited, the role of the editor in weaving patchworks of ideas became an obvious guiding light. Almost 30 years since I started, I am still chasing that same urge and thrill.
Filmmaker: What editing system did you use, and why?
Taylor: Avid. Despite some idiosyncrasies, it’s still the most refined system to use under extreme pressure and the most tactile in terms of fine cutting.
Filmmaker: What was the most difficult scene to cut and why? And how did you do it?

Taylor: Working with the material from the day of the napalm attack in the film was extremely powerful and never lost that impact, but the most difficult material to incorporate never actually made the final cut as it would have tipped that delicate balance that we were mindful of.
Filmmaker: What role did VFX work, or compositing, or other post-production techniques play in terms of the final edit?
Taylor: The section of the film where we worked with Index on the forensic investigations was a fascinating balance as we evolved the scene. It started as a much more technical and verbose scene with more dialogue between the protagonists discussing the ideas in play but became something more focused and confident in its message. Incorporating it into the human story we were telling really felt like an exciting marriage of VFX and evidence-based, testimonial filmmaking.
Filmmaker: Finally, now that the process is over, what new meanings has the film taken on for you? What did you discover in the footage that you might not have seen initially, and how does your final understanding of the film differ from the understanding that you began with?
Taylor: To be honest it’s too soon to get that perspective. Seeing it with an audience will complete the journey, but the reaction to the film will become part of its legacy.