New Great Salt Lake film sees standing ovation at Utah’s last Sundance Film Festival

Park City • On the first day of the last Sundance Film Festival in Utah, the state’s biggest landmark got its Hollywood close-up.

First, big cheers came for the people working to bring the the Great Salt Lake back from decline. Then, the director of the documentary that featured them saw a standing ovation.

Abby Ellis told the Park City audience that the three people she profiled in “The Lake” — microbiologist Bonnie Baxter, ecologist Ben Abbott, and Brian Steed, the state’s Great Salt Lake commissioner — give her hope that a solution is possible.

“I have a lot of faith in them not giving up,” said Ellis, who lives in Salt Lake City.

[Read more: What are your favorite Sundance Film Festival memories? The Tribune wants to know.]

The film, playing in the festival’s U.S. Dramatic competition, shows how Abbott and Baxter used their research to sound the alarm about the dangers posed by the lake’s possible collapse.

It also follows Steed as he works to convince government leaders — including Gov. Spencer Cox, who is seen frequently in the film — that the lake’s problems are urgent but solvable.

“This is an us problem, and more people realize it,” Steed told the audience at The Ray Theatre.

Baxter, who teaches at Westminster University, said that “I just have felt for 10 years that we’re on the precipice. To see this artwork come together, I’m excited.”

Abbott, an associate professor at Brigham Young University, called upon the audience to be part of the lake’s recovery.

“It depends on everyone in this room, everyone in this watershed, everyone in this country,” Abbott said. “Ultimately, the lake doesn’t respond to money, or a podcast or even films. It responds to water.”

From ‘Frontline’ to the lake

In an interview before the festival, Ellis said her first experience with the Great Salt Lake was a couple of decades ago, when she was an undergraduate student at the University of Utah.

“I walked out halfway in. The water was below my knees. It smelled bad, and there were lots of bugs,” Ellis said.

She studied in Utah for five years before living in New York for 12 years as a filmmaker — including several years working on PBS’ series “Frontline.”

There, one investigative documentary she directed, “Flint’s Deadly Water,” examined the Michigan city’s lead-contaminated water; another, “Shots Fired,” partnered with The Salt Lake Tribune to examine police shootings in Utah.

Ellis said she returned to live in Utah in 2019, with her husband, Fletcher Keyes, who is a producer on both “Shots Fired” and “The Lake.” She said Keyes first suggested the Great Salt Lake as a subject in 2022.

“It was the year the drought was really visible, and the reservoirs were low,” Ellis said. “We were new parents thinking about the place where our child would grow up.”

Ellis recalled when The New York Times ran a 2022 story that called the lake an “environmental nuclear bomb” — because of the possibility of toxic chemicals from the lake bed becoming airborne over the Wasatch Front.

“That made it easier to get interest from national funders,” Ellis said. She made a pitch to Sandbox Films, a production company that specializes in documentaries about science, and they “got excited about it.”

The challenge is the lake, and the threat to its existence, “is a very complicated story,” she said. “I realized halfway through that it would make a great ‘Frontline.’ The solution — getting water to the lake — is simple, but how you do that is very complex.”

Ellis said she wanted to go beyond “Frontline’s” formula. “I was itching to stretch creatively — to tell it in a more observational way that almost feels like fiction,” she said.

Science and faith

To tell the story behind the science, Ellis centered the movie on Baxter, Abbott and Steed’s work to raise awareness of the lake’s troubles and convince leaders to take them seriously.

“Bonnie Baxter, who’s been studying the lake for 27 years, was the first person we spoke to,” Ellis said. “It was surprising how long she’s known about this.”

The movie captures how Abbott and Steed, both practicing members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, are guided in their work by their faith.

“Their faith plays a big part in who they are,” Ellis said. “I thought Ben Abbott’s principles — being good stewards of the land — were incredibly universal. You can be a brilliant scientist and a man of faith.”

As Ellis was finishing work on “The Lake,” and getting it ready for Thursday’s premiere, she held a space in the credits.

A week ago, the announcement came that actor Leonardo DiCaprio and his production company, Appian Way, was signing on as an executive producer. (Thursday’s premiere came the same day as the announcement of this year’s Academy Award nominations — and DiCaprio received a Best Actor nod for “One Battle After Another.”)

DiCaprio “really cares about the environment and water issues in the West,” Ellis said. “When we spoke to his team, they were already very aware of the Great Salt Lake.”

Now that “The Lake” had its first screening at Sundance, the work goes on to find distribution, so audiences can see it after the festival ends. Meanwhile, Ellis and her husband have another production in the works: Their second child, due to arrive in late March.

At Thursday’s Q&A after the film, someone asked Ellis what she wants audiences take away from “The Lake.”

“I hope people realize we have power,” she replied. “A lot of our problems are caused by us, so we’re the solution.”

Note to readers • “The Lake” screens again: Friday, 3 p.m., Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, Salt Lake City; Wednesday, noon, The Yarrow, Park City; Thursday, 9:30 a.m., Holiday 1, Park City; and Sunday, Feb. 1, 5:30 p.m., at the Park City Library. It also can be seen on the festival’s web portal, Thursday through Sunday, Jan. 29 to Feb. 1.