WENTACHEE — A marquee of Sundance Film Festival lights up for a director raised in Quincy, Cole Webley, whose first feature dramatic film opens in Utah, where he has lived for 20 years now. The road trip movie “Omaha” is about a father driving his young son, daughter and their golden retriever for a few days, set against the economic crisis of 2008.
Sundance is “our American mecca of independent cinema,” Webley said. Independent and studio distributors attend to find films to distribute to larger audiences in a theatrical run. In a competitive and prestigious selection process, of 15,775 submissions from 156 countries, 86 movies were chosen for the 2025 festival, according to sundance.org.
As the only Sundance film made locally in the state of Utah, with collaboration alongside the Utah Film Commission, the cast and crew will be able to attend the opening on Jan. 23. Webley has compared the festival production to taking a pig to the Grant County Fair as a 4H kid — “showing this product we made that we’re so proud of,” he
Webley also works as a commercial director of big campaigns including Dicks Sporting Goods, Johnson & Johnson, RE/MAX, Cost Plus World Market, Oreo and Albertsons. In a parallel journey for 15 years, he’s made short films as well. The screenplay for “Omaha” was optioned from writer Robert Machoian as a script he made ten years prior, which only needed edits on 10% of the story.