As Mediterranean Claims More Migrant Lives, Oscar-Shortlisted ‘Until He’s Back’ Trains Lens On Distraught Families Of The Missing

In the last 10 years, more than 25,000 migrants and refugees have died trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe, according to UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

The Missing Migrants Project estimates more than 12,000 people have been lost at sea in the Central Mediterranean alone in that timeframe, their bodies never recovered. Despite those enormous numbers, the missing – those never repatriated, their fates unknown – get scant attention in coverage of the migrant crisis. Filmmaker Jacqueline Baylon resolved to address that in her Oscar-shortlisted documentary Until He’s Back.

“Generally speaking, there’s a much bigger response for people that make it, which there should be, but there’s zero response for people who don’t make it. And so there’s never much of an effort to try to find out who didn’t make it and try to find their remains,” Baylon tells Deadline. “That’s why the story really spoke to me, because I wanted to focus on the dead and give dignity to the dead.”

The film begins in Morocco with Ahmed Tchiche, a man who’s son Yahya embarked on the dangerous trip across the sea pursuing the dream of a brighter future in Spain. En route, disaster strikes, as it does for so many packed onto crowded and unsafe vessels bobbing on the waves, and Yahya joins the long list of the missing and presumed dead.

“When someone is missing… it really changes things,” Tchiche says, his eyes moist with emotion. Later, he tells Faisal, a volunteer with CIPIMD, the International Center for the Identification of Missing Migrants, “I didn’t want him to leave. Some of his friends left. They told him he could make more money in Spain. His surviving friends called. They told us Yahya and those with him had died.”

Baylon filmed Until He’s Back in Morocco, in Spain, and on the Mediterranean separating the countries. In Málaga, on Spain’s southern coast near the Strait of Gibraltar, she spent time with María Ángeles, a coordinator with CIPIMD who fields call after call from families trying to find their missing loved ones.

“It’s about my cousin, who came from Oran [Algeria] to Spain,” says one caller. Another caller tells her, “I have a question for you about a missing brother.”

Often, María Ángeles has no information to give, other than perhaps to tell families that a boat carrying migrants has disappeared. “We are looking for it,” she tells them. To Baylon she adds, “Normally, that means tragedy.”

In December 2022, a body washed ashore on the Spanish coast. Indications pointed to an identity — Yahya, Ahmed’s son. Then began the forensic process of determining that with certainty.

“María Ángeles was going to take on the case of trying to help Ahmed get the DNA test and everything so that they can repatriate the body. That’s how I met Ahmed,” the director explains. “We immediately went to go see Ahmed and give him our condolences… I think he himself wanted to share his story because he wanted to show the power of closure, which a lot of families do not get. I think what he wants is for people to care when a body is lost.”

Baylon approached the documentary project with intimate knowledge of the migrant experience. She writes in a director’s statement, “When I was six years old, my mother paid a smuggler in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, to get us across the Rio Grande on an inflatable tube. My mom’s decision changed my life forever. She knew that if we made it, we’d have a shot at the American dream. And we did.”

She grew up in El Paso, Texas and now makes her home in Spain. “As a journalist, I always gravitated towards immigration and migration stories and civil rights abuses, mostly because of how I got to the United States and everything that I went through with my mother,” she tells Deadline. “So to me, this was very personal when I started spending more time in Spain and seeing that they were grappling with the same things that the United States and Mexico border grapple with, and sort of similar sentiment: there’s the people who are welcoming of immigrants and then, of course, there’s the people who are not so welcoming of immigrants.”

In Málaga, she followed another person who exudes deep humanity, mortician Martín Zamora, who for more than two decades has been helping to recover bodies that wash ashore and give those left unidentified a proper burial. In Yahya’s case, after DNA tests proved his identity and the legal process was completed to permit repatriation, Zamora prepared the body for return to Morocco, carefully following Islamic practice.

Until He’s Back shows the completed circle of life and death – Yahya’s return home, where his father can bury him. Other men in the village aren’t so fortunate. They hold up photos of their missing boys or missing brothers. One man tells Faisal, the CIPIMD volunteer, “To find our kids, we’ll do whatever it takes! We just want to know, are our kids alive?”

Until He’s Back premiered at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Montana, where it won Best Short Documentary. It also won Best Documentary Short at the Hamptons International Film Festival and has been nominated for numerous additional awards. It aired as part of the PBS series POV and can be streamed now on the PBS app.

Every day, migrants continue to set out on the perilous journey across the Mediterranean, and only a percentage reach their intended destination. Until He’s Back speaks to that urgent humanitarian crisis, but Baylon sees added significance to the film in the U.S., where a new anti-immigration administration is about to take power in Washington.

“Trump coming into office, first thing on his agenda is to try to deal with immigration, and he keeps on threatening about mass deportation,” Baylon comments. “So, I do think that this [film] winds up being a relevant topic. While it was filmed in Morocco and Spain, the entire world is on the move.”

The filmmaker adds, “People are leaving, searching for opportunities because there’s no opportunities where they are. People are being persecuted, so they’re leaving because of that. And there’s also climate change. People are going to continue moving, and as long as governments make it harder and harder for people to obtain visas to actually move, people are going to find ways to do it and risk their lives.”