“The question was never purely philosophical.” A filmmaker trained to manage risk steps inside the question he can no longer answer from a distance.
In a small village called San Ignacio, a stranger handed me back a piece of my life I thought was gone for good. That wasn't the story I set out to tell. It became the one that mattered most.
The question at the heart of Into Uncertainty was never purely philosophical for me. I have spent much of my life working in environments where risk is something to be anticipated, managed, and reduced. But over time, I began to wonder whether a life built around controlling uncertainty can also become a way of avoiding the parts of ourselves that cannot be managed so neatly.
That question became deeply personal: how much of our fear is protecting us, and how much of it is quietly keeping us from becoming who we might otherwise be? Just weeks before we left for Baja, our lives were interrupted by the Los Angeles wildfires and the work of supporting one of the most devastating disasters we had ever encountered. We left knowing how fortunate we were to step into uncertainty by choice while so many others had just had uncertainty forced upon them.
We went to Baja expecting to find answers about courage, risk, and why people willingly move toward the unknown. Instead, the experience complicated nearly every assumption we carried into it. What we found was less about conquering fear than learning to live honestly beside it.
That truth arrived clearest in San Ignacio, where a donation meant for the local fire department turned into an invitation to ride again — the ride I never got to finish years earlier, on the night an injury ended my career without warning. I didn't expect Baja to give that back to me.
My hope is that audiences recognize something of themselves in that struggle — not necessarily in Baja or in an extreme expedition, but in the quieter moments when life asks us to move forward without certainty, without guarantees, and sometimes without knowing whether we are ready. Into Uncertainty is ultimately about that choice, and about the possibility that the life waiting beyond fear may begin with simply taking the next step.
Ryan G. Christen · Director
Ryan G. Christen
Director · Producer · Participant · Narrator
Ryan G. Christen is a filmmaker, former firefighter, and emergency management professional whose career has unfolded in places defined by consequence, crisis, and human resilience. Throughout more than two decades in emergency response and disaster recovery, he continually returned to media production — using film to create training, tell stories, and teach firefighters and law-enforcement professionals. Into Uncertainty marks Christen's feature-length directorial debut.
Growing up on Florida's Gulf Coast, Christen used a family VHS camera to document Hurricane Opal and later produced films through his high school television program. He went on to establish a media company, creating commercial projects, public-safety training films, immersive simulations, and documentary-style content while continuing to work in emergency services and disaster operations.
On the expedition, Christen served as one of the film's two-person production team while also driving, navigating, operating cameras, managing technical systems, and appearing as a central subject. A career-ending injury had cut his firefighting career short years earlier — a loss that found an unexpected resolution during production, in a small Baja village called San Ignacio.
Derek Bays
Associate Producer · Participant · Geologist
A geologist and California state emergency management professional, Bays grew up with Dave as family — not by blood, but by choice: Dave married into his family as a child, and after Derek's stepfather passed when Derek was eleven, Dave never stopped showing up for him. The Baja XL was a chance to return to something Dave had given him since boyhood — being pushed past his comfort zone and meeting it head-on.
Bays served as driver, navigator, production partner, and one of the film's central subjects, leaving behind his wife and two young daughters for the ten days he was gone.
Dave Moore · Wilson Craig · 2025 Baja XL Participants · Post-Production by Ryan G. Christen
Filmmakers, participants, crew, and subjects
No external crew followed the expedition. Christen and Bays were responsible for both completing the route and documenting it, making the production inseparable from the decisions and consequences onscreen.
The truck became a rolling film set. Camera mounts, power, data, navigation, communications, and storage systems were designed to survive vibration, dust, heat, fatigue, and constant movement.
There were no staged failures, recreated conversations, or controlled resets. Mechanical breakdowns, wrong turns, exhaustion, conflict, humor, and connection were captured as they occurred.
The visual and sonic imperfections are not presented as flaws to hide, but as evidence of participation — the camera is affected by the same conditions as the people carrying it.