Richard Nixon and a Vietnam War protestor recall a bizarre, pre-dawn encounter in 1970

‘A part of me was going: Now’s your big chance: say something that makes him see everything.’

In the very early morning of 9 May 1970, a few days after the Ohio National Guard killed four Vietnam War protesters at Kent State University, and the United States began conducting military operations in Cambodia, President Richard Nixon ventured out from the White House to talk with protesters gathered outside the Lincoln Memorial. Using a recently declassified recording of Nixon describing the event, and an interview with the photographer Bob Moustakas, one of the protesters who briefly met the president while tripping on LSD, Nixon’s Coming examines the bizarre, pre-dawn encounter from both perspectives. Cleverly constructed, the short archival documentary explores the cultural tensions of the times through one fleeting, and exceptionally strange, conversation.