Sugarcane (2024)
Director: Emily Kassie, Julian Brave NoiseCat Run Time: 107 min. Rating: R Release Year: 2024
Starring: Charlene Belleau, Chief Willie Sellars, Ed Archie Noisecat, Julian Brave NoiseCat, Willie Sellars
Country: United States, Canada
Language: English, Secwepemctsín
About the film:
Winner of the Directing Award at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
In 2021, evidence of unmarked graves was discovered on the grounds of an Indian residential school run by the Catholic Church in Canada. After years of silence, the forced separation, assimilation and abuse many children experienced at these segregated boarding schools was brought to light, sparking a national outcry against a system designed to destroy Indigenous communities. Set amidst a groundbreaking investigation, Sugarcane (2024) illuminates the beauty of a community breaking cycles of intergenerational trauma and finding the strength to persevere.
“’Sugarcane’ is the product of humane and insightful filmmakers who are determined to never let anyone forget, and put their moral outrage to exemplary good use.”
—Joe Leydon, Variety
About the filmmakers:
Julian Brave NoiseCat is a Director from Oakland, California. Before his transition into filmmaking, NoiseCat held roles as a policy analyst, cultural organizer, and political strategist. During his time as a journalist his work has appeared in notable publications such as The New Yorker, and The New York Times.
Emily Kassie is an investigative journalist who has received Emmy and Peabody nominations. Kassie directs and reports stories on humanitarian conflict and crises domestically and around the world. She is best known for her works Undocumented in the Pandemic (2020), Anatomy of Hate (2020) and Detained (2020).
Sugarcane (2024) was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, and NoiseCat and Kassie won the Directing Award at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival for their work on the film.
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