A Cultural Reckoning. Truth-Telling, Documentary Cinema, and First Nations Resilience in 'Sugarcane'

In 2021, evidence of unmarked graves was discovered on the grounds of an Indian residential school run by the Catholic Church in Canada, making headlines around the world. Documentary filmmaker and journalist Emily Kassie began looking into a particular Mission – St. Joseph’s – and reached out to her old friend and colleague, Julian Brave NoiseCat. What she didn’t know is that St Joseph’s was the school where Julian’s family attended and where his father was born.

This unexpected collaboration on a deeply personal history would bring about their Oscar®-nominated documentary debut Sugarcane. Premiering at Sundance Film Festival in 2024, where it won the U.S. Documentary Directing Award, this documentary is set amidst a groundbreaking investigation while stunningly illuminating the beauty of a community breaking cycles of intergenerational trauma and finding the strength to persevere. Sugarcane is an epic cinematic portrait of a community during a moment of cultural reckoning. In this spotlight session, we are joined by co-directors Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie as they discuss why documentary filmmaking is so important to them, why it’s vital to get projects like Sugarcane out into the world, and how the film brought the past into the present with such force.

 

Image credit: Ed Archie NoiseCat grapples with the shocking truth of his secretive birth at St. Joseph’s Mission Indian residential school. (Credit: Emily Kassie/Sugarcane Film LLC)