From the Bonneville desert to Kanosh, Utah provides the foreboding settings for two Sundance 2020 entries

Two filmmakers — one locally grown, the other a Californian by way of Brazil — decided Utah could provide the bleak landscapes they needed for their films, both which will have their world premieres at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

For Edson Oda, the Bonneville Salt Flats were the right setting for “Nine Days,” a drama set in a parallel reality where an interviewer (Winston Duke) must decide which soul (embodied by Zazie Beets, Bill Skarsgard and Benedict Wong, among others) gets the chance to be born. For Robert Machoian, finding a backdrop for a marriage on the rocks in “The Killing of Two Lovers” took the crew to remote Kanosh.

I talked to both filmmakers about their road to Sundance, a journey that took each through Utah. Read it at sltrib.com.