ABOUT THE PROJECT

LOGLINE
Set in a near-future Southwest ravaged by water and power shortages Emery, a botanist from Navajo Nation, joins two developers on a perilous Colorado river expedition in Grand Canyon, as they seek tribal approval for a controversial dam project. As suspicions grow, mounting tensions and the unpredictability of the river threaten their survival.

SYNOPSIS
Across the American West, a water crisis has reached a breaking point. Rivers run shallow, reservoirs sit exposed, and desperate municipalities scramble for solutions. Into this vacuum, industrial ambition has surged unchecked, energy companies, tech developers, and private interests racing to claim what little water and landscape remain, with regulation struggling to keep pace.

Near the Grand Canyon, Emery, an environmental monitor, is assigned by the Navajo Nation to assess a proposed hydroelectric project: a family-run company’s bid to resurrect the long-contested Marble Canyon Dam, a development that would sever one of the last pristine stretches of the canyon. As human suffering deepens across the region, the dam exists in a moral gray zone, once unthinkable, now weighed seriously against the numbers Emery reviews before the trip: scarcity, shortage, lives already disrupted. She carries out her work with quiet accountability, believing in careful measurement over certainty. Privately, her motivation runs deeper: she longs to reconnect with the river of her youth, a place once tied to her aunt, who taught her to trust quiet persistence.

To complete her assessment, Emery joins a ten-day rafting expedition through the canyon alongside three men who hold sharply opposing views: Jordan, a seasoned and cynical guide navigating what may be his final run before the river becomes a reservoir; Floyd, the company’s patriarch, a proud Mormon driven equally by profit and legacy; and Noah, Floyd’s nephew, a gifted engineer seduced by the promise of human invention, caught between loyalty to his uncle and the evidence mounting before him.

As the group descends deeper into the canyon, moments of genuine awe, stillness, are fractured by ideological conflict and the growing peril of shallow, unpredictable water. When Emery uncovers that Floyd and Noah are concealing their real agenda, a pumped hydro storage facility at the confluence of the Little Colorado River, engineered to power a new data center at the Rim, the expedition’s stakes shift entirely. The revelation lands as betrayal, not just of Emery’s trust, but of the river itself.

After Jordan is badly injured at Lava Falls, swept under and pulled back by Emery’s grip, the group is left adrift without their captain. Floyd’s certainty erodes into paranoia; a sudden storm tears the motor loose from their raft. Emery makes the choice to hike out of the canyon alone, a brutal climb through heat and dehydration, carried forward only by her aunt’s voice in memory. She emerges battered but alive, and rescue follows for the rest of the group. In the aftermath, Noah’s confidence fractures under the weight of what the dam would destroy, and the project stalls. Emery chooses to remain in Arizona, changed in quieter ways, not with answers, but with grounding. And the river flows on.

PROJECT TYPE Narrative Feature

DIRECTOR Emilie Upczak
SCREENWRITER Emilie Upczak
PRODUCER Emilie Upczak, Christi Cooper
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER Michael Caine
CO-PRODUCER Lisa Yelloweagle
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER Harlan Taney
IMPACT PRODUCER Gina Papabeis

WEBSITE emilieupczak.com/#/silt/

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