Stephan Köster was member of a communist film group in Cologne in 1975. He was sent to Saigon with instructions to film the advance of the Vietcong and the comrades’ final victory. In two months, he shot the propaganda film Saigon giaiphong (The Liberation of Saigon) while his own doubts grew.Eight years later he looks back on his time in Vietnam. He tries to investigate his naïvety, arrogance and optimism at the time and to confront that time with his experience now (1983). What for instance has happened to his girlfriend Xuan, the Vietnamese girl he wanted to marry? Köster doesn’t want to look at the film as he did when he made it.Der Erfolgsbericht is a personal document about how a journa¡list/film-maker can be dragged along by the political ideals of his own time and how he later looks back on it.
