Jennifer Baichwal

Jennifer Baichwal is a Canadian documentary filmmaker, writer and producer.

Baichwal was born in Montreal, Quebec and raised in Victoria, British Columbia. She is the daughter of Krishna Baichwal Sr. a cardiothoracic surgeon, and Elvina Baichwal. Together they had four children Jennifer, Krishna Jr., Elizabeth and Kristine. She is of Indian and British heritage. In 1985, she traveled to Morocco and lived on a farm, inspired by the writing of Paul Bowles, who would become the subject of her first feature-length documentary. Baichwal studied philosophy and theology at McGill University, writing her Master's thesis on Reinhold Niebuhr and receiving her master's in arts in 1994. In 1995, Baichwal traveled with her family to India to scatter the ashes of their late father who had died from heart-related issues.

Baichwal is married to cinematographer and director Nicholas de Pencier. They were brought together by Baichwal's classmate, Canadian journalist Evan Solomon, after he had suggested de Pencier when she needed a cinematographer for her film. Together, they have two children, a son Magnus born in 2000 and a daughter Anna born in 2003. The couple started a production company in 2000, originally under the name Requisite Productions, now called Mercury Films.

After completing her master's at McGill, Baichwal decided to pursue documentary film work as she found that it provided her the right avenue to explore the questions and issues that she had studied in her program. Baichwal on her career choice: "I wanted to explore these questions of the human condition, but in a medium that was more lateral and more emotionally accessible than an academic paper." She has stated that the documentary "allows you to reflect on ... things that are happening in the real world in a way that is creative". Her films often attempt to investigate problems within documentary film form. She says: "There has to be some kind of mystery as well - a meta-level problem that the film becomes a response to. Our Paul Bowles film is about the impossibility of biography. The Holier It Gets is about the perils of confessional work, and The True Meaning of Pictures is about issues of representation. Manufactured Landscapes, proceeding from Edward Burtynsky's photographs, is about changing consciousness through witnessing the places we are all responsible for, but normally never get to see."

Baichwal's production company has produced most of her films, along with other short films and documentaries including The Hockey Nomad and Black Code, the latter of which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2016.

Many of her films' subjects are artists of other mediums than film. In an interview with the Seventh Art, Baichwal mentions how she is drawn to artists, stating: "There is something about art that can't be paraphrased and just living in the complexity of that world is very rich for me..."

In 2016, Baichwal was named a member of the Toronto International Film Festival Board of Directors.

Since their initial collaboration in 1995 and with the exception of Manufactured Landscapes, all of Baichwal's films have been shot by her husband Nick de Pencier.