Filmmaker Abby Ellis premiered her documentary, "The Lake," at Utah’s last Sundance Film Festival. The film documents the dire state of Great Salt Lake and those who are working against the clock to save it.
“An environmental nuclear bomb looms in Utah. Two intrepid scientists and a political insider race the clock to save their home from unprecedented catastrophe,” reads the Sundance Film Festival webpage.
Director, cinematographer, and producer Abby Ellis took on the severity facing her home state in her new film.
“Be active in your community and pay attention to what is going on," Ellis said. "Read the news. Be optimistic."
Shortly before debuting at this year’s festival in Park City, Utah — the state’s final year as host — "The Lake" was signed on by Appian Way Productions as an executive producer, a production company founded by Leonardo Dicaprio.
“I hope we get a wide distribution and the film can have a very long life and reach a lot of people,” Ellis said.
"The Lake" features Bonnie Baxter, Brian Steed, and Ben Abbott, Utahns who, through their expertise, have found themselves in the center of raising the alarm and advocating for Great Salt Lake.
“I hope it hits people in their hearts. I can talk about science all day but I think having the artwork of film bring that to people is really, really important,” said Baxter, director of Great Salt Lake Institute and a professor of biology at Westminster University.
“I think it is really important that this film brings both the reality of the crisis we are experiencing, but also it brings a little bit of hope," Baxter said. "We haven’t reached this point of no return, there is a way to turn it around, but also the timeline has to be now. We have to act now. We are just one dry summer away from hitting another historical low. So we don’t want to do that. We don't want to get there. We need people to act. We need our Legislature to act."
While Utah faces steady organic growth in population, young adults are embarking on their future in the state.
Steed, the Great Salt Lake commissioner for the Utah Legislature, said it is important for young Utahns to realize that our decisions impact the lake, and we can all be better.
“I wish it weren’t the last year of Sundance in Utah," Steed said. "That being said, I am really glad to get the message out that the Great Salt Lake continues to be an issue, it continues to be something that we track very carefully and it continues to be something that all of us need to be concerned about because all of us have a stake in it and all of can absolutely do better and help the Great Salt Lake recover."
In an early scene of the film, Abbott takes a phone call and shares his deep concern about his findings of high levels of arsenic in all the dust of the dried lake bed. In a moment of shock and honesty he says he is just supposed to be in a lab and teach students, that this level of advocacy was unanticipated.
Abbott is a global ecologist at Brigham Young University, and executive director of Grow The Flow, whose mission statement is “a citizen-led movement uniting science, storytelling, and civic action to do what no community ever has before: save its saline lake before it's too late.”
“We need an outpouring of public support that is bigger than Utah," Abbott said. "Sundance is of course one of the biggest platforms globally for film and for activism. What we need is for people to come together from all over the country all around the world around this issue. If we can figure this out for Great Salt Lake, that becomes a model for success for other issues around the world. We underestimate the power of the people, and we have seen this again and again actually change what our leaders do. We sometimes think that our leaders are out in front, but our leaders are generally followers. And so I hope that everybody who hears this and is interested in Great Salt Lake realizes they have the power to decide what happens next.”
On Friday, Jan. 30, at the festival’s award ceremony, "The Lake" won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award: Impact for Change. Ellis and co-producer Fletcher Keyes accepted the award.
“I hope it encourages people to stand up for their communities and have hope that we have power as people and to not sleep on things,” Ellis said.
Keyes said we are made to think we are working against other people, but so often all it takes is a conversation to find common ground