Identifying Nelson/Buscando a Roberto
About the Project
In 1997, when I was 16, I discovered I was one of El Salvador's Disappeared Children, a group of close to 1,000 kids who were forcibly separated from their families during the country's 13-year-long civil war. Thirteen years after reuniting with my birth family, I was approached by my former camp counselor, John Younger, about making a documentary about my experiences. He had been reading my Ana’s Miracle blog and found the story compelling. So in March 2011, we traveled to El Salvador for a historic gathering of disappeared children to begin filming.
What I didn't realize then was that being the subject of the film would be the easy part. The hard part would be learning how to tell the story. Identifying Nelson/Buscando a Roberto became an intensive, years-long education in narrative theory, story structure, and documentary filmmaking. It's still in progress, but the project taught me how stories actually work, lessons that now inform everything I create, including my novel. While John has directed the film and handled most of the production work, my primary contribution has been helping crack the narrative structure and keeping the project alive through the business and legal side of independent filmmaking.
The Challenge
How do you tell a story about war, forced disappearance, adoption, and identity, especially when you're living inside it? John and I had compelling footage: interviews with my birth family about their experiences during the war, conversations with other disappeared children, and even breakfast with El Salvador's president. We had emotional moments and historical significance. But we couldn't figure out how to structure it into a coherent film.
The problem wasn't a lack of material or effort. We spent years exploring different approaches, even starting a podcast called Inside the Journey to work through our ideas. But conceptual understanding doesn't automatically translate into a working narrative. By 2014, we were stuck, frustrated, spinning our wheels, and starting to wonder if we'd ever figure it out. The project was straining our working relationship.
My Approach
Getting Started
The project began in 2010 when John, who works in TV and film production, came across my blog Ana's Miracle where I'd been experimenting with sharing my family's story. He offered to help me turn it into a documentary, and I agreed without fully understanding what I was signing up for.
We needed funding, so I suggested using Kickstarter, which was relatively new at the time. In September 2010, I launched our campaign on stage at the #140 Conference in Boston, publicly sharing my story for the first time. The campaign struggled for weeks. With one week left and over $9,000 still to raise, it looked like we'd fail. Then a large unexpected donation changed everything, momentum built, and within six days, we hit our $15,000 goal.
In March 2011, we flew to El Salvador for a week-long gathering of disappeared children. We interviewed my family, other Salvadorans who'd been separated from their families during the war, and civil rights hero Suyapa Serano Cruz, whose court case led to the creation of the Day of the Disappeared Children. We came home with incredible material and started editing.
Hitting the Wall
By 2012, we had a strong opening that we debuted at the University of Chicago and a potential ending. It felt like progress. But as we tried to connect everything in between, we realized we didn't actually know what we were doing. We had compelling, powerful moments, but no story.
We tried everything we could think of. Different structures. Different approaches. The podcast helped us think through ideas, but we couldn't translate those ideas into a film that worked. By 2014, we were frustrated and stuck. The project felt like it might never get finished.
The Breakthrough
In April 2015, I discovered a book called The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne. I read it in three days and immediately sent a copy to John. The book focuses on novel writing, but I could immediately see how its principles applied to our film. It was providing solutions to the exact problems we were having, such as how genres work, what structural elements stories need, and why certain sequences feel satisfying while others don't.
It quite literally saved the project and our working relationship. We finally had a framework for understanding what was missing and how to fix it.
Finding the Structure
Over the next few years, John and I studied The Story Grid and other narrative resources intensively. A few months to a year after discovering the book, I was learning about the Hero's Journey when something clicked. I could see how the moments from our footage lined up perfectly with that structure. More than that, I realized I'd been on a series of overlapping journeys—discovering my identity, reconnecting with my birth family, understanding the war's impact. That insight not only helped us structure the film but eventually led to the story idea for my novel.
By 2019, we had a detailed treatment and outline. We knew what story we were telling and how to tell it.
Getting to a Rough Cut
Creating the outline was one thing; editing it into a watchable film was another challenge entirely. In 2021, John connected with editor Rogelio González-Abraldes, who helped us transform our outline and collection of clips into something cohesive. Over the next few years, we went through the film scene by scene, revising and refining.
Throughout this process, I handled most of the company's financial and legal responsibilities, including managing budgets, handling contracts, and keeping the business side running so we could focus on the creative work when we had time. Neither John nor I could work on the film full-time; we both had to take on other projects to support ourselves. But we were determined to get this story right, no matter how long it took.
Where We Are Now
By mid-2024, we completed our second rough cut. We're currently working toward a polished cut that we can use to secure finishing funds—whether through pitching studios or private investors. Those funds will let us obtain rights to historical footage, score the film, and finalize the remaining details.
The project has taken 14 years so far, which sounds like a long time. But for me, it's been film school, business school, and a master class in storytelling all rolled into one. I learned narrative theory because I had to, because my own story was so complex that it demanded that level of understanding to tell it properly.
Everything I learned about story structure, genre, and the Hero's Journey now informs my novel writing. The persistence and problem-solving skills I developed in keeping an independent film project alive for over a decade shape how I approach any long-term creative work. And I learned that some stories are worth the time they take, especially when you're committed to telling them right.
The skills I developed through this project have also extended beyond the film itself. In 2015, two Salvadoran friends who, like me, had been forcibly separated from their families during the war needed help reuniting with their birth mother for the first time. I applied everything I'd learned from the film and my crowdfunding work to create a campaign video, manage a GoFundMe campaign, and coordinate logistics. We raised over $5,000 in two weeks, and I was able to photograph their reunion. The documentary gave me the technical and storytelling skills, but more importantly, it connected me to a community of people navigating similar journeys and showed me how those skills could make a tangible difference in their lives.
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