Ho Chi Minh leads Vietnam's communist movement from a Paris tailor's apprentice and Moscow-trained revolutionary to the founder of a nation, and this film builds its account from American scholars assessing his life and legacy. It traces his path from founding the Vietminh in 1941, through the Indochina War against French colonial rule from 1946 to 1954, to the armistice that made him president and prime minister of North Vietnam. The film covers his brief relinquishing of the premiership in 1955 while he held onto the presidency until his death in 1969, and the industrial development he pursued with backing from the communist bloc. It follows the war against US-backed South Vietnam that continued past his death into 1975, framing him as the figure whose strategy and endurance outlasted his own lifetime. The American perspective gives the film its particular angle: scholars from the country that fought against him assessing what made him, in their own framing, an enigma worth explaining.