Jacqueline Baylon

Issue #13

The loop
Jacqueline Baylon
"The most personal stories are what I’m drawn to and so that inevitably winds up being immigration related."
Jacqueline Babylon is a documentary filmmaker focusing on civil rights and immigration stories. She was born in Chihuahua City, Mexico, and raised in El Paso, Texas. After graduating from Texas State University, Jacqueline began her career as a reporter and went on to become a journalist for The New York Times and Business Insider, among others. She is now focused on producing and directing documentaries. Her latest film, Until He’s Back, delves into the harrowing journey of Moroccan immigrants crossing the Strait of Gibraltar to reach Spain and the heartbreaking challenges families face when retrieving the bodies of those who drown at sea. Until He’s Back has won multiple festival awards and was recently shortlisted for the 2025 Academy Awards Best Short Documentary Film. LEARN MORE HERE

Can you tell us about your origin story, being born in Chihuahua City, Mexico, and raised in El Paso, Texas and how your childhood has informed your work?

My experience crossing the Rio Grande River when I was six years old with my mother, and living in the U.S. undocumented, really shaped who I became. I think that really helped me figure out what I wanted to cover as a journalist. Throughout my career, I’ve covered immigration, civil rights abuses, and movements within the farm working community. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I can relate, first hand, to the ways that people kind of lived in the shadows when they first got into the US, if they didn’t have appropriate papers. I think there was a period in my career where I felt like I was getting pigeonholed because I was sort of the Latina reporter, but I was very comfortable being the Latina reporter and continued pursuing it. Now, having done this film [Until He’s Back], filming between Spain and Morocco, it was my Spanish skills that sort of got me the trust and the access [to the subjects of the film], as well as my immigration background.

Do you have a first memory of storytelling, whether it be a book being read to you, going to the cinema for the first time, or some other interaction with stories and what impression did it have on you?

I started teaching myself English by reading Charlotte’s Web and I read it over and over and over. That’s my first book that I remember from my childhood that had a big impression on me. I don’t know if I ever went to the cinema with my mother. I don’t think we could afford to, but on the weekends we would watch this very funny movie where the prominent character, La India Maria, was an indigenous woman making her way to the big city. It was sort of a comedy about all her adventures. Those are my earliest memories of being entertained and following a story.

How did you get into documentary filmmaking? 

I majored in broadcast journalism. So I’ve always been in love with the media of video, you know, the moving image. I kept on getting reporter jobs because I knew how to do video. I would always sort of write a story and shoot a video that was like a mini version of the story that I would write. So I always kept my skills fresh, until I got to the New York Times and at the New York Times, I wanted to pivot to video, and I wasn’t able to do it for many reasons. It was a tough team to break into, so I ended up deciding to leave. I got out of journalism for a couple of years and worked at Morgan Stanley. They have a creative agency which does all their internal H.R. and recruiting videos. So I wound up becoming a producer there and I was able to work with huge budgets which is now very funny to me because the videos were anywhere between 2 and 5 minutes. What I could do with that budget in the documentary world!  But anyways, that was sort of how I started. Because the budgets were so high and paid well for all the freelancers involved, especially the cinematographers. They essentially took these corporate jobs to pay the rent. I got to know the cinematographers and gaffers and basically all the people that worked in documentaries. So I kept in touch with them until I eventually was able to break out of Morgan Stanley and get back into journalism. It was through Scripps News, which was my latest job, that I was able to pitch this documentary [Until He’s Back] and convince my boss to let me do it. He trusted me. It’s a very long story but I found our executive producer, Zach Toombs, who really believed in the pitch.

How did you navigate the language barrier in Morocco while making Until He’s Back?

Until He’s Back is filmed in Spain and Morocco. On the Spanish side, I was able to communicate fine, because I speak Spanish, but in Morocco they speak a form of Arabic called Darija. On the first trip, I went with a translator and a fixer who is Moroccan. And then it was during that trip that I met one of the participants [Faisal] who worked for the NGO that connects families with deceased loved ones. After that, it was mostly Faisal who helped me with the translations. I think at first it was hard to figure out. We tried all kinds of things. We tried translating in real time but I felt that messed with the flow of things. Then we got to the point where we knew the story we were filming. So it just kind of came to me that I just had to tell Faisal to make sure that what they were going to be talking about was relevant to us. In hindsight maybe I didn’t have to ask that, but you don’t want to get a bunch of footage of them talking about how much they love lunch or something, which is great too, but I needed them to talk about Ahmed’s feelings and how long they’ve been fighting to get the body back. That’s sort of how the translation worked. At first it was in real time and then eventually after we all got used to being around each other, a lot goes a long way with facial expressions and gestures.

How do you go about finding the stories you want to tell? What is that process like?

I think it depends kind of where I am, mentally, sometimes emotionally, but also as a journalist you kind of have these things that you consider yourself an expert in. I read a lot. I try to follow stories over long periods of time. Magazine stories are always really good starting points just because there’s so much reporting that has gone into these reports. So it’s a combination of conversations, reading, watching other things, and just keeping up with the news. That’s more from a journalism side, but for films, I find that things that are the most personal are what I’m drawn too, and so that inevitably winds up being immigration related.

How are you expanding your craft, in terms of the filmmaking process? Are you listening to film related podcasts, seeking mentors, reading industry publications?

I listen to some podcasts, but I think this year it’s been mostly seeking mentors or just film industry colleagues. I’ve gotten into about 16 festivals. I make sure to go to at least one every month. And so I’ve been able to keep that up, but I’ve been very lucky that the film has been doing great in terms of viewership. People have been really respecting it. So that’s been an easy way to meet people that I respect and that I hope will become mentors and colleagues as I continue to grow my craft.

Until He’s Back has been shortlisted for an Oscar. What is the process and criteria to be eligible for consideration?

I’m new to this. There’s two ways I know for sure. One way is winning an Oscar qualifying festival, which we’ve won two of. We won Big Sky and we won the Hamptons International Film Festival. That is one way you can automatically be considered for the competition. And then the second way is to have a theatrical release of your film, for seven days. After you officially qualify, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences open their application process. I just had to show a letter of my award. And then depending on how much money you can invest in it, you start officially campaigning. It basically becomes like a political campaign, essentially. The easiest way to know, or to at least get a list of, who are the AMPAS voters is by working with a publicist. And so the next thing that you have to do is go to the voters. So in festivals, you start looking a little bit closer to the program to see if there is anyone there? Once you become serious about trying to go for the short list you basically start keeping tabs on who these voters are and where they are. Sometimes they show up at festivals, sometimes award shows. We got nominated for IDA. That was a big week in L.A where a lot of voters were just out, you know, they would go to film parties. And so it’s like you’re running for office and trying to lobby people to watch your film. I think that’s been the biggest struggle for me. I don’t come from money, but deciding to spend money on this is an investment for my future. It just gets a little bit murky sometimes, because you’re like, well, shouldn’t I just be working on my next project and putting all my money in my next project? But if I can get this one as far as I can get it and get more people to care about and be invested in the cause, then that in itself is worth it too. It’s definitely a world in which I knew nothing about and now I feel like I can teach a master class on it. This year there are like 105, 106, shorts that qualified and the short list is 15 films. And the nomination will be five. And it’ll be a very similar process in which you kind of still continue lobbying voters. I’m sort of in the fundraising phase right now and the window for nomination voting is so small, so we’ll see. Hopefully we get that nomination but if it all ends here I’m very happy and very proud. 

What is your biggest creative obstacle?

That’s a hard question to answer. Probably just myself and not always knowing if I’m chasing the right thing. They say trust your instincts and I do think that I have good instincts, but that doesn’t mean that I always believe that everything I’m going to do is going to be magical. So I think sometimes it’s just me. I kind of block myself.

What’s the last experience, film, or person that has inspired you?

Having gone through this entire year with this film has been really inspiring. The best part has been meeting a bunch of women filmmakers and being able to know them as colleagues. There’s a lot of films right now that are shortlisted in the features that I loved but one of them in particular is called, Hollywoodgate. The director Ibrahim Nash’at spent a year with the Taliban after the U.S. pulled out. How he shot it was totally fly on the wall. That to me was really inspirational and I want to do something similar next.

Do you have a long term goal?

Now that I’ve sort of broken into documentary filmmaking, I want to continue making documentaries. I have a couple things that I’m thinking of doing on the border where I grew up, but that’s kind of as far as I’d like to share, just because the handful of ideas are pretty early, but my goal is to do a feature.

What advice would you give your younger self, knowing what you know today?

I guess the same advice that I should continue trying to remind myself of every day, which is just be patient. Try to enjoy the moment. I still don’t really quite comprehend what that means. Just going through right now, being shortlisted, of course I’m relishing it, but then there’s also this work that needs to go into potentially be nominated. So it’s sort of being patient with all projects. This project, the production, took about a year. And so I would try to live my life. I would try to take some time off, go on vacation. But of course my head was always somewhere else. I wish I could change that. I wish I could know that things are going to happen the way that they’re meant to happen, because it ended up working out, right?

If you weren’t a documentarian, a storyteller, or journalist, what else might you be doing?

Maybe a doctor with Doctors Without Borders. I’d like to help people. I think the biggest thing, even as a journalist, that I hope I can do is help someone in some way, even if it’s by writing a story about them and maybe changing something, some sort of policy or even with my film, bringing more awareness to the situation.

Do you have a mantra you live by?

My mom always tells me what is meant to be yours is going to be yours. All you have to do is put in the work and what is meant to be yours will be yours. I don’t know if that’s a mantra but it’s something my mom always tells me.

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