Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively?

From very early on in the writing process, I selected Las Cruces, N.M., as the backdrop for In the Summers—a town with a personality as rich as the characters, from the house with its treasures, Slot Canyon with its million mosquitoes and rattlesnakes, to White Sands, where the temperature reached 108°F by 11 AM. But the location I keep thinking about is Bob-O’s, where we filmed the teacup ride and the arcade.

We had secured another location where we had done multiple tech scouts, but they pulled out at the last minute upon discovering the film’s queer themes. Bob-O’s embraced us and allowed us to take over their amazing space. It was incredibly fun, everyone running around and laughing. The location also ended up fitting the aesthetic of the film much better than the previous one. The last shot of that sequence with the mural is one of my favorites from the film.

See all responses to our annual Sundance Question here.