LA GRANDE — A movie shot in La Grande last winter will soon hit the big screen in St. George, Utah.

“Breakup Season” is slated to make its world premiere March 29 at the Desertscape International Film Festival. The feature film, a drama and comedy directed by H. Nelson Tracey, will debut at 5 p.m. (Mountain Standard Time). “Breakup Season” will be the only feature-length film to debut at the film festival, according to its website.

“We are excited to have it premiere at the Desertscape International Film Festival,” said Chris Jennings, of La Grande, one of the movie’s producers.

“Breakup Season” is about a young man who brings his girlfriend to his rural Oregon hometown for Christmas to meet his family for the first time, only for things to go terribly wrong upon their arrival. The bulk of the movie was filmed at a home on Morgan Lake Road. The La Grande/Union County Airport is another site where scenes were filmed.

Most of the filming was done in February 2023 but some of the movie’s cast and producers returned to La Grande for about two days in June to shoot some scenes in a summer setting, Jennings said.

“Breakup Season,” following its premier, will be shown at several other film festivals.

“It will be fun to see where the film goes from here,” said Jennings, director of La Grande’s Eastern Oregon Film Festival.

“Breakup Season” will make its Oregon premiere sometime in 2024 in La Grande. Information on the La Grande showing will be released at a later date.

The movie’s cast includes Chandler Riggs, best known for his role in “The Walking Dead” television series; Samantha Isler, who is in the 2016 film “Captain Fantastic”; James Urbaniak, who appears in the 2023 movie “Oppenheimer”; Jacob Wysocki, who is in the 2012 film “Pitch Perfect”; and Brook Hogan and Carly Stewart.

Jennings said the “Breakup Season” cast and the crew remain grateful for the support they received from the community during the filming of the movie in La Grande.

“Everybody had a very positive experience here,” he said.

In good company

“Breakup Season,” which has a running time of 1 hour and 42 minutes, will be one of eight feature films shown at the Desertscape International Film Festival, which runs from March 27-30.

Other feature films to be shown at Desertscape include “Thelma,” directed by John Margolin, which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in late January.

“Breakup Season” is one of many films Tracey has directed, but it is his first full-length feature film.

“I’ve been dreaming of making movies since I was 5 years old. This is the culmination of a lifetime of loving movies and studying film,” Tracey said in a press release.

Tracey, like Jennings, said he is glad to be a part of the Desertscape festival.

“Desertscape is a great regional film festival that embraced our film wholeheartedly,” he said.

The director also likes the location of St. George, in southwest Utah on the Arizona border near Snow Canyon State Park.

“Given the picturesque mountain setting at the tail end of winter, it is the perfect place to premiere this film,” the director said of “Breakup Season.”