For screenwriter Robert Machoian, seeing his work “Omaha” come to life has been a journey — and “dream” — more than a decade in the making.
Now, that dream is finally becoming a reality, and it’s happening at Utah’s largest ode to independent filmmaking.
“Omaha,” a story that follows two siblings and their father as they trek across the country after a tragedy, is the only film in the 2025 Sundance Film Festival lineup with Utah ties — part of it was filmed here, and its creators call the Beehive State home. It will have its world premiere at the festival as part of the U.S. dramatic competition category.
The Sundance Film Festival is scheduled to run from Jan 23. to Feb. 2.
Machoian, a professor of photography at Brigham Young University, said he submitted the script to a Sundance screenwriter’s lab in 2013 under work’s original name, “Nebraska,” but didn’t have success.
“Their response back was, ‘No one makes a movie with two kids and a dog. You know, that’s just not a thing,’ and I was like, ‘I don’t believe you,’” Machoian said.
“Omaha,” Machoian said, was born in 2008 out of an “event” that happened in Nebraska, though he left the summary intentionally vague as to not spoil the film.
“There was kind of a shift in some of the laws there, and it sparked this kind of event that occurred in America with a lot of families that were struggling,” Machoian said.
At that time, he was living in California, and he knew a father of six who drove out to Nebraska. That journey inspired the writing of this story.
The cast of “Omaha” includes John Magaro, Molly Belle Wright, Wyatt Solis and Talia Balsam.
Machoian, a father of six himself, said the film “is really about this father who’s struggling to take care of his children and trying to provide a life for them that he’s not certain he’s going to be able to do by himself.”
After the initial Sundance rejection, Machoian had trouble getting the film financed until the film’s director, Cole Webley, came along years later. This is Webley’s first full feature film, and the first film where Machoian has written the script but not directed it himself.
Webley learned of Machoian through another film the BYU professor directed that was featured during the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, called “The Killing of Two Lovers.” The two connected, and Webley asked Machoian if he had any scripts waiting for the big screen. Machoian dug up “Omaha” and sent it to Webley, who loved it.
The script, Webley said, “came at the right time in my life.”
“I was looking for material that spoke to me and what I was going through as a 40-year-old father with kids who were moving through adolescence and teenage years,” Webley said. “That’s really what our film is about: fatherhood.”
So, Webley and Machoian got to work in 2022.
“It resonated that it was a story that could be told any day, which is that of a father who loves his kids and wants to do the best thing for them, and in this case, isn’t really sure what that is,” Webley said. “We watch that journey with him and his two kids as they travel from across the American West. It’s a road trip movie.”
Webley, who attended BYU, has filmed commercials all over the nation, including Utah. He said always knew his first movie would be made in the Beehive State. The film is set in Nevada, but 20 days of the filming schedule was spent in Utah.
“Here in Utah,” Webley said, “we shot in old mining towns, in the salt flats.”
Webley said part of the beauty of this film was that the team had “full autonomy” because they financed it themselves.
“One of the things I’m most proud of is that this film really shows the joy and beauty of childhood,” Webley said, “as well as the very adult conversation of this little family and what they were going through in this moment.”
Machoian said he’s excited to return to the Sundance festival because its a “great platform for independent cinema.”
“What you get is an audience that loves cinema,” he said, “and so it’s a really kind of exciting experience, personally, because it’s all people that really love film, so they’re engaged.
