Jack Ballo
Jack Ballo was in the video production business for over twenty years before he started making documentary films. He worked on hundreds of projects behind the camera; editing, producing and writing. In 2008, he was offered an opportunity to go to the Dominican Republic and film poor families who were living in extreme poverty. That video, “A Crisis Observed,” changed the direction of his production company and he started producing documentary films. All of his documentaries have social value to them while bringing awareness to untold stories and interesting people that the traditional media doesn’t cover.
Ballo started by producing humanitarian films in third world countries. His first documentary, WRONG TURN, (2008) highlighted a Canadian man who built houses for families living in shacks in the Dominican Republic. In 2010, he went back to the Dominican Republic and made an award-winning short documentary called ELIO (2010). He continued making films about social issues including his next documentary about singer songwriter, Mary Gauthier, who searches for the truth about her adoption. BEFORE YOU LEAVE (2012) won Best Documentary at the film’s premiere at the Garden State Film Festival. Ballo went on to co-write his first screenplay, THE DOO DAH MAN (2015), based on the true story of his own experience hitchhiking to California and being picked up in a stolen car by a con artist who broke out of prison. His next documentary, DESTINY’S BRIDGE (2016), was a critically acclaimed feature filmed in Lakewood, NJ. The controversial movie is about a homeless minister who leads a community living in the woods while facing eviction. The award-winning film received national attention by bringing the idea of “tiny houses for the poor and homeless” into the tiny house movement.
His last film, BROTHERS (2018), is a story about two brothers living off the grid and their struggle to survive while dealing with alcoholism. The movie played in film festivals all over the world and won 8 awards. He is currently working on a new film project called ROHNA CLASSIFIED that is expected to be released in 2023. The WWII documentary is about the deadliest sea-disaster in the history of US War. The radio-guided missile attack of the HMT Rohna was erased from history along with the men who died when the burning ship sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. There were 1,157 soldiers and crew killed in the attack including 1015 US soldiers. Survivors were ordered to remain silent in a scandal that mislead over a thousand Gold Star families who were searching for the truth.
