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 his documentaries have social value to them while bringing awareness to interesting people and untold stories that the traditional media doesn’t cover. He started by producing humanitarian films in a third world country. His second documentary, WRONG TURN, (2008) highlighted a Canadian man who built houses for families living in shacks in the Dominican Republic. In 2010, Ballo 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. The award-winning feature film is a Flatiron Pictures production distributed by Invincible Pictures. 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. In 2017 Ballo broke barriers by making one of the first documentaries shot completely with a hand held iPhone without using any apps or accessories. 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. Soon after making BROTHERS, Ballo went on to teach a filmmaking course at Count Basie Center for the Arts.

His latest film project is called ROHNA CLASSIFIED (2025). The film tells the story about a WWII transport ship equipped with non-functioning lifeboats and inadequate lifebelts that was sunk by one of the first radio-guided missiles ever used in war. 1,015 U.S. soldiers were killed in the attack that remains the greatest loss of life at sea in the history of any U.S. war. Uncovered classified documents reveal that neglect and oversight contributed to the large number of casualties. The government deflected responsibility by declaring the disaster classified indefinitely while ordering all survivors to remain silent. The casualty families were stonewalled and most of them went to their own graves never knowing what happened; their boys just never came home.