Standing at the front of The Ray Theatre Thursday afternoon, director Abby Ellis paused to thank the people who helped bring her film “The Lake” to the screen: family members who had flown in for the premiere, collaborators who spent years shaping the film, and the Sundance programmers who gave it a platform.
“I’ve been coming to Sundance since I was in college,” Ellis told the audience. “So to be standing here today is an honor.”
Sundance Film Festival Director Eugene Hernandez introduced the film, calling it “an urgent documentary.”
The film, three years in the making, follows the accelerating crisis facing the Great Salt Lake and the people working to prevent its collapse.
Ellis’ career has centered on environmental and public health reporting. Her previous work includes coverage of the Flint water crisis and the Ebola outbreak, investigations that often focused on the consequences of systemic failure after harm had already occurred.
“Most often, I arrive after the big story has already happened — after governments or systems have failed and people are already sick. That’s usually when the story begins for me.” Ellis said. “With this project, we were trying to do something different and document it earlier, while there’s still time to change course.”
Producer Fletcher Keyes, Ellis’ partner and a Park City native, also brought a background in reporting on environmental issues to the project. Keyes spent much of 2022 covering Utah’s drought, work he said helped ground him in the science and policy conversations already unfolding around the Great Salt Lake. That reporting, he said, put them in a strong position to recognize the urgency of the situation once new research began drawing international attention to the lake’s decline.
The film centers on three figures whose work intersects at the lake: Dr. Bonnie Baxter, a microbiologist at Westminster University who has studied the lake’s ecosystem for three decades; Dr. Ben Abbott, a global ecologist at Brigham Young University and executive director of the nonprofit Grow the Flow; and Brian Steed, Utah’s first Great Salt Lake commissioner, appointed during the filmmakers’ development process.
Each represents a different approach to the crisis. Baxter, Ellis said, is someone who has long understood what is coming and has been trying to sound the alarm. Abbott provides a bridge between science and public advocacy, while Steed operates within state government, navigating policy and competing interests.
From initial conversations with scientists studying the Great Salt Lake, Ellis and Keyes said the direction of the film began to take shape as they worked to understand the scope of the issue. Ellis said she had never heard of a terminal lake before beginning the project, and learning what the term meant only deepened her sense of urgency around an issue she already knew was serious.
“I think telling this story from the perspective of it being firsthand experience changes things a lot. We also have a 6-year-old child, and raising a kid in this environment, when you know the clock might be ticking, when you know this place might not be safe for our child by the time he’s an adult, that gives us another driving force. It gives us more purpose when it comes to telling the story.”
That perspective shapes the film’s broader approach. “The Lake” helps viewers understand the scope of the crisis, the obstacles that have limited progress, and the ways politics, heritage and religion uniquely shape the conversation in Utah.
Ellis said the sense of urgency also extends to unanswered questions about public health. While heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury and lead are known to be present in the exposed lakebed sediment, it remains unclear how far dust travels during wind events and what communities are being affected. Monitoring systems to track airborne exposure are still limited.
“I think people don’t realize how much we don’t know yet,” Ellis said. “Until we have proper monitoring, there are real questions about how safe it is to be outside on high-wind days, especially for communities closer to the lake.”
Keyes said working on a film premiering at Sundance, his debut at the festival, carries special meaning.
“Sundance has always been part of my world,” he said. “To now be participating as a filmmaker, especially with a story that’s so tied to this place, feels really special.”
“The Lake” also marks the first feature-length project Ellis and Keyes have produced together. Keyes said the collaboration was driven by a shared sense that the story needed to be told now.
That call to action extends beyond Utah. The filmmakers describe the Great Salt Lake as a warning sign for water insecurity across the western United States. How Utah responds, they said, could serve as a model for other regions facing similar threats.
Ellis said they hope the film challenges assumptions about who cares about environmental issues. Ellis said one of the clearest takeaways from their reporting was that concern for the lake cuts across political lines.
“What we show in the film, I hope effectively, is that people on both sides of the aisle politically, care a lot about this,” she said. “And not to assume that because you live in a conservative state they don’t care about the environment and won’t do what’s necessary to protect it.”
Stylistically, “The Lake” leans into elements of the horror genre, a choice the filmmakers said reflects the reality of the situation rather than exaggerating it.
“The idea of a dust storm full of arsenic and mercury enveloping a city of nearly three million people is horrifying,” Ellis said. “Environmental crises are horror stories, and we don’t usually treat them that way.”
The film balances that tone with a sense of possibility. Ellis said she hopes viewers leave feeling motivated rather than defeated, particularly as Utah’s legislative session started this week.
“You have power,” she said. “I think we’re living in a time where it feels like we have no power, and everything feels overwhelming, but we do. A lot of our problems are caused by us, which means we’re also the solution.”
Following its Sundance premiere, the filmmakers hope “The Lake” secures distribution and reaches audiences nationally and internationally. They also plan to continue local screenings tied to an impact campaign aimed at keeping the conversation alive.
Support for the project has grown along the way, including backing from high-profile environmental advocates and filmmakers such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Jimmy Chin. For Ellis and Keyes, having a team that genuinely cares about the outcome matters as much as the film’s reach.
“They’re not just focused on, you know, the biggest sale or the biggest splash,” she said. “They care about the outcome of the situation and the authenticity of the storytelling, and that matters a lot.”
‘The Lake’ screenings
- 3 p.m., Jan. 23, Rose Wagner Center
- 12 p.m., Jan. 28, The Yarrow Theatre
- 9:30 a.m., Jan. 29, Holiday Village Cinemas
- 5:30 p.m., Feb. 1, Library Center Theatre
- Online screening: festival.sundance.org