The Sympathizer (Season 1)

The Sympathizer (2024) is a spy drama set at the end of the Vietnam War — watch it online on iFILM. A captain in the South Vietnamese army escapes to California with a wave of refugees, then quietly keeps feeding intelligence back to the Viet Cong from within their own community.

Hoa Xuande plays the Captain, a man split down the middle — equal parts exile and infiltrator. He helps fellow officers find jobs and navigate a new country while writing encrypted reports that could get them all killed. Robert Downey Jr. takes on multiple roles across the season: a CIA handler, a Hollywood director shooting a war epic, and others — a sly comment on how America tells stories about wars it lost. The series was directed by Park Chan-wook and Fernando Meirelles, co-produced across Canada, South Korea, and the United States.

Season one adapts Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. What makes it land differently from most Vietnam-era productions is the double perspective: the war is neither heroic American sacrifice nor simple liberation story, but something murkier and more honest. Stream The Sympathizer (2024) online on iFILM.