Over the past two decades, Jordan Allott has worked in more than 40 countries as a documentary filmmaker. Not the glamorous ones, but in those where it is more dangerous to film. From Cuba and Syria to Nigeria, India, Iraq, China, and beyond, he has produced feature documentaries, TV series, and short films for broadcasters, NGOs, and civic organizations.
That adventure started when he founded In Altum Productions (IAP), a production company focused on human rights, religious freedom, and the dignity of people living under dictatorship, war, or persecution. Their projects have been screened and distributed worldwide, including in European parliaments, major international film festivals, and on television and streaming platforms such as Amazon Prime. IAP is based just outside the Washington, D.C. area, though Allott spends much of his time on the road filming.
“My faith isn’t in a separate box from my career; it shapes how I see people, especially victims of injustice,” he says. “I try to approach each story, whether in Cuba, the Middle East, or rural Nigeria, as an encounter with someone who has infinite worth, not just as ‘content’ for a film.” He thinks his most meaningful professional moments have been those spontaneous connections with people who, in many ways, live very different lives from himself.
Here is my interview with Jordan.
You studied film in the United States, but you were born in the United Kingdom.
I was born in the United Kingdom but grew up largely in the United States, so in many ways the U.S. became home. My dad was a producer in the U.K., mainly for live events like sports, music, large international productions. What stayed with me most from his life was his ability to travel, encounter different cultures, and remain intellectually curious about those experiences. I envied that as a kid, and it planted the seed that I wanted a life engaged with the wider world.
When I went to college, I didn’t start in film. I studied political science and philosophy. Over time, I became increasingly drawn to cinema, especially films outside the Hollywood structure, such as European art cinema from the 1950s and 1960s, for example. I realized that film could be a way to wrestle with some of the biggest questions in life in a creative way, without strict rules about how those questions needed to be presented.
That realization eventually led me to documentary film, which brought together all these interests: the political, the philosophical, the spiritual, and the creative. I’m very glad I made that choice. In documentary work, you step into real, living worlds, even if only for a short time. Instead of recreating a world that used to exist or inventing one that never did, I have the privilege of living, however briefly, alongside the people whose stories I’m telling. That experience of being with them, not just imagining them, has been one of the great gifts of my career.
What is In Altum Productions (IAP)? What is the most powerful image or experience you’ve gained from working with the company in such diverse and dangerous places?
IAP is a documentary and media company I founded to produce feature-length documentaries, television series, and shorter films for NGOs, broadcasters, and civic groups, all centered on human dignity, conscience, and freedom.
Our unofficial motto is that we “go further to tell powerful stories.” Part of our niche is going to places that are difficult, sometimes dangerous, and often overlooked. I take a lot of pride in not just doing redundant work. If we don’t tell these stories, there’s a good chance no one else will tell them in quite the same way.
One powerful image that has stayed with me comes from Syria. In 2017 I was in a heavily destroyed part of Aleppo at sunset. Whole blocks had been reduced to rubble. In the middle of this destruction, children were playing, weaving in and out of the remains of buildings. One boy climbed up onto a mound of debris, smiled, waved at us as if it were the most normal thing in the world, and then disappeared back into what was left of his neighborhood. It was a small, quiet moment, but it summed up something essential: life goes on, even in ruins. People still laugh, play, and dream in the middle of war.
Moments like that reset your priorities. Your job is to work hard and carefully enough that their courage, their endurance, and their humanity can reach people who will never set foot in those places.
Your first documentary, “Oscar’s Cuba,” immediately branded you as an enemy of the Cuban socialist tyranny.
“Oscar’s Cuba” was my first documentary, and it threw me straight into the reality of a totalitarian regime. The film tells the story of Dr. Óscar Elías Biscet, a Cuban physician and dissident who spent years in prison for defending human rights and the unborn. Filming anything honest in Cuba is hard.
The challenges were basic but serious: constant surveillance, a dense network of informants, the risk to the people we interviewed, and the possibility of having our material confiscated or being detained ourselves. We had to move carefully, film discreetly, and think constantly about the safety of the Cubans who were trusting us with their stories.
The impact of the documentary was greater than I expected. Dr. Biscet continues his work from Havana and he and his wife remain good friends of mine to this day. That film set the direction for much of the work I’ve done since.
More broadly, I think this applies to life in general. If you’re going to take a risk that might get you in trouble, cause you real pain, or even put your life at stake, you have to look honestly at the worst-case scenario, even if only for a moment. If you face that possibility and still decide to move forward because you’re motivated by the right reasons, such as protecting someone, standing up for the truth, doing what you believe is right, then you have to be prepared to accept the consequences. I don’t believe in taking risks just for the sake of it. But if you’ve done your homework, thought things through, and weighed the risks and benefits as carefully as you can, then whatever happens, you can live with it, because you know you were driven by the right reasons.
You’ve filmed in places like the Middle East, where the persecution of Christians is cruel and has persisted since the 12th century. What did filming persecuted minorities there leave you with?
Filming persecuted minorities in the Middle East, like Christians, Yazidis, and others, has left me with a mix of anger, admiration, and responsibility.
Anger, because you see how systematic the persecution is: forced displacement, destruction of cultural and religious heritage, economic suffocation, and targeted violence, often carried out with near impunity. The world’s attention span is short, but the people living through it don’t get to move on.
Admiration, because I’ve met families who have lost almost everything except their faith and still refuse to answer hatred with hatred. There’s nothing romantic about it; it’s costly, exhausting, and often lonely, but it’s real courage.
And responsibility, because once you’ve sat in someone’s destroyed home and listened to their story, you can’t pretend you don’t know. You carry them with you. The least you can do is try to tell their story honestly, without turning them into either propaganda or statistics.
One example that stands out to me is spending time with Ibitsam, who lives in rural Egypt and is the wife of Samuel, one of the 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians beheaded by ISIS in 2015. Coptic Christians face a great deal of persecution in Egypt, and this particular community outside Minya experiences that persecution and martyrdom in a way that feels almost like witnessing something straight out of biblical times.
They live the Bible. The way they practice their faith makes you feel more connected to the reality behind the biblical stories, including the life of Christ. They are willing to sacrifice everything for their faith, and in doing so, they become an inspiration to millions of Christians around the world.
In Nigeria, a genocide against Christians is being perpetrated by Islamist militias. Rapes, mutilations, and murders occur almost daily. What has your experience been like on the ground, and how have you seen the climate against believers change on your various trips?
Nigeria is one of the most painful places I’ve worked. In parts of the country, especially in the Middle Belt and the north, attacks on Christian communities and other vulnerable groups are not rare “incidents”; they’re part of daily life. Villages are burned, people are killed or kidnapped, and many survivors end up displaced with very little protection or hope of justice.
On the ground, what strikes you is the combination of horror and normalcy. You film survivors’ testimonies, and then you see children kicking a football around in the middle of the ruins because childhood doesn’t pause for politics or conflict.
Comparing my trip in 2025 to my first time in Nigeria in 2014 really brought that change into focus. In 2014, we were there around the time Boko Haram’s kidnapping of schoolgirls sparked the “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign. We traveled relatively freely with a fairly large group. It wasn’t safe in any normal sense, but movement was still possible. Now, more than a decade later, it feels noticeably more dangerous. Everyone we interviewed said some version of the same thing: “It has gotten worse.” The attacks have become more frequent, more coordinated, and often more brazen. Many Nigerians we spoke with feel that justice is not being done and that perpetrators act with near impunity.
Another troubling pattern is the pressure, both internal and external, not to highlight the religious dimension of the violence. The Nigerian government and even some international actors often prefer to frame it in purely ethnic, economic, or “farmer-herder” terms because acknowledging the religious targeting is politically inconvenient. That leaves many religious leaders and local communities feeling they have to downplay one of the core realities of what they’re experiencing in order to get any help.
In the end, I’ve become convinced that international pressure is a crucial part of any solution. Nigeria is a huge, complex country with people of different faiths living side by side, often peacefully. But when systematic violence goes unpunished, external voices, governments, organizations, and media, can play an important role in pressing the Nigerian authorities to act more decisively to protect their own citizens.
How much do you think art can do to promote religious freedom?
Art doesn’t compete against law, diplomacy, or security. A film won’t stop an attack, and a song won’t rewrite a constitution. But art can do something those tools can’t: it shapes what people are willing to see, to feel, and ultimately to tolerate or reject. Music, film, and other art forms tell the stories that prepare the ground for cultural and even legal change.
A good example is the song “Patria y Vida,” which became an anthem of freedom for protesters in Cuba in July 2021. It helped rally Cubans as they took to the streets against the island’s totalitarian dictatorship. When the song went on to win Song of the Year at the Latin Grammys, it amplified the plight of the Cuban people far beyond Cuba’s borders.
Musician and producer Yadam González, who co-wrote and produced “Patria y Vida,” also composed the music for my most recent feature-length documentary, “Cuba’s Eternal Night,” which follows the lives of five Cubans over two years amid government repression, shortages, and the island’s largest mass exodus. Yadam’s music carries the same spirit as the song: it gives emotional depth and urgency to realities that might otherwise be reduced to statistics or dry reports.
That, to me, is what art does at its best. It doesn’t replace diplomacy, laws, or policy work, but it reaches deeper into people’s hearts and imaginations, and that’s often what moves them to demand needed changes.
The same is true for religious freedom. Art can express what a community is living, their hopes, fears, faith, and sense of injustice, in a way that is neither purely rational argument nor raw emotion, but a fusion of both. It helps people on the outside not just understand a situation, but feel it, and that shift in perception is often where real change begins.
Documentary filmmaking, whether it’s a feature-length film or a short mini-doc, sits in that intersection. It’s rooted in facts and reality, but it’s also an art form. Art can weave those different parts together and present a fuller picture of who we are. That’s why it can be so powerful.
