Thanks to Lazareff he later returned to Vietnam in 1966 and made his acclaimed "The Anderson Platoon" for the ORTF. Later in 1991 he came back to Dien Bien Phu and recreate the battle in a self-titled epic docudrama — in the fashion of "Tora! Tora!" — in which his son Frédéric played his own role as cameraman. The actual Vietnamese army was used to play the role of both the Viet Minh and the State of Vietnam national army fighting on the French Union's side against the Communists. Meanwhile, men from the French 11th Parachute Brigade played the role of the French paratroopers. In the 2000s (decade), his latest productions consist of the 2003 novel "The Butterfly Wing" ("L'Aile du Papillon") and "Above the Clouds" ("Là-Haut, un roi au-dessus des nuages"), the theatrical adaptation of his 1981 novel "Up there" ("Là-Haut"). Pierre Schoendoerffer received acclaim in international short and feature film festivals. As a writer he won multiple festival, academy and military awards and prizes, including the Prix Vauban, in 1984, (celebrating his life achievement.) In France he is famous for his 1977 three-time César Award-winning "Le Crabe-Tambour" ("Drummer Crab"), based on his French Academy-award–winning self-titled novel. His first success was in 1965 with his Cannes Film Festival Best Screenplay winning "The 317th Platoon" ("La 317e Section"). Both films are based on his experience in the First Indochina War. He is most known abroad, particularly in the United States, for his 1967 Oscar-winning Vietnam War B&W documentary, "The Anderson Platoon" ("La Section Anderson"), originally made for the French public channel ORTF's popular "Cinq colonnes à la une" monthly show. It earned him an Oscar, an International Emmy Award, a Red Ribbon Award at the New York Film Festival, a BBC's Merit Award and an Italia Prize. Pierre Schoendoerffer was elected at the Académie des Beaux-Arts' Section VII: Artistic creation in the cinema and the audio-visual field, Seat#4, on 23 March 1988, replacing Guillaume Gillet. He is president of the Académie des Beaux-Arts since 2001.