Director
Abby Ellis
Executive Producers
Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Davvison, Phillip Watson, Jessica Harrop, Caitlin Mae Burke, Rachel Crane, Geralyn White Dreyfous, Anna Barnes, Chai Vasarhelyi, Jiimmy Chin, Heather Kahlert
Producer
Fletcher Keyes
Editors
Abby Ellis, Emelie Mahdavian
Co-Editors
Abby Ellis, Emelie Mahdavian
Cinematographers
Alex Takats, Abby Ellis
Composer
Natalia Tsupryk
A raw, vérité film that follows three individuals fighting to save a dying lake. They see what’s coming—poisoned air, a collapsing ecosystem, a community on the brink—and throw themselves into the everyday, often mundane work of trying to stop it. As they push against bureaucracy, apathy, and the ticking clock of a crisis decades in the making, something eerie and heartbreaking lingers at the edges: dust rising in the background, a reminder of what will be lost if they fail.
THE LAKE is a horror story that transcends traditional environmental narratives. It’s not just a fight to save a lake—it’s a confrontation with the consequences we’ve set into motion. The film asks: What do you do when catastrophe feels inevitable? Where are the lines drawn—and who is willing to cross them?
A reckoning with our choices and systems, but also a testament to the possibility of redemption. The question lingers: Can we save ourselves from ourselves?
Post-Screening Discussion with producer Fletcher Keyes, film protagonist Bonnie Baxter, and internationally renowned expert at the forefront of research on the Great Salt Lake, moderated by Jessica Ordóñez-Lancet, Senior Director, Energy and Environment Campaigns at the Center for American Progress.
Film Introduced by Mark Toner, Executive Vice President of Communications and Strategy at the Center for American Progress.
Abby Ellis is a Peabody- and Emmy-nominated director and journalist who makes films about the moments and institutions that shape us. Her work fuses rigorous reporting with intimate, character-driven filmmaking, bringing the human cost of complex stories into vivid focus.