The film A Complete Unknown has sparked interest in the folk singers’ doomed romance, and with it the realization that a similar dynamic is ‘happening to girls everywhere’

Lynda Saldana saw A Complete Unknown on the day it opened – partly because she’s a Bob Dylan fan, and partly because she loves Timothée Chalamet, who plays the folk rock icon during his breakout black turtleneck years. But one supporting character stood out more: the folk legend Joan Baez, played by Monica Barbaro. Saldana had never heard of Baez, but watching Baez and Dylan’s on-again, off-again relationship on screen made her eager to learn more. What happened between them? Did they end up together? “I had to look up their lore,” Saldana said.

Saldana, who is 19 and a sophomore at the University of Arizona, is not the only young woman studying up on Baez’s decades-long career – and especially where it intersected with Dylan’s. Saldana found TikTok fan edits of the duo performing together at the 1964 Newport Folk festival, and clips from a 2023 documentary in which Baez called the romance “totally demoralizing”.