Cabin 23 Productions was founded in 2014 by Nelson/Roberto and John Younger. Our mission is to tell meaningful, impactful stories that redefine the history of Central and South America. We believe great storytelling allows us to find what connects us and ultimately change the world.
We are the production company responsible for the upcoming documentary Identifying Nelson/Buscando a Roberto.
We also produced 86 episodes of the Inside The Journey podcast, which ran from 2013 to 2017.
How it started
Our journey together started many years before the cameras started rolling. John (age 18) was Nelson’s (age 8) first counselor at a YMCA summer camp in Western Massachusetts, in cabin 23. Funny enough, we even shared a bunk.
After reconnecting on Facebook in 2008, John began reading Nelson’s blog Ana’s Miracle to find out why Nelson now referred to himself as Nelson/Roberto. Drawn in by Nelson’s passion for sharing his family’s story, we began working together after John offered to share his background as a TV/Film Producer to help in any way he could.
We launched a fundraising campaign via the crowd-sourcing website Kickstarter that would allow us to begin telling the story as a documentary. By the last week of our 8-week campaign, we had raised only 30% of our $15,000 goal when something unique happened: we closed a $9,000 gap to successfully fund the project in six days and with the backing of 170 total supporters!
A few months later, Nelson was invited to participate in an historic commemoration of El Salvador’s Day of the Disappeared Children and we decided this event would be a great place to begin our documentary process. During our 10-day trip to El Salvador, we interviewed several members of Nelson’s family and many other disappeared children, met the President of El Salvador, and traveled out to the Department of Chalatenango, the former Conflict Zone, to meet Suyapa Serrano Cruz, a woman who one day will be listed in textbooks about Latin America as a Civil Rights Hero.
Since 2011, we have been working to finish our film.