SUGARCANE, Kassie and NoiseCat (2024) / Resistance comes, in its own time

A stunning tribute to the resilience of Native people and their way of life, Sugarcane, the debut feature documentary from Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, is an epic cinematic portrait of a community during a moment of international reckoning. In 2021, evidence of unmarked graves was discovered on the grounds of St. Joseph's Indian Residential School, a Catholic Church mission in British Columbia. 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 illuminates the beauty of a community breaking cycles of intergenerational trauma and finding the strength to persevere.

Genre: Documentary
Directed and written by Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie
Produced by Emily Kassie and Kellen Quinn
Executive producer: Lily Gladstone
Cinematography: Christopher LaMarca and Emily Kassie
Edited by Nathan Punwar and Maya Daisy Hawke
Music: Mali Obomsawin
Release dates: 20 January 2024 (Sundance), 9 August 2024 (Canada and U.S.)
Running time: 1h 47m

HOW THIS WORKS
To find out where to rent or stream Sugarcane online, visit [JustWatch.com ](http://justwatch.com./)You can also find it on TVMovie https://tv.movie/movie/sugarcane/250648, GooglePlay https://play.google.com/store/search?q=sugarcane&c=movies, or YouTube https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sugarcane+documentary. Watch it on your own during the week and then join us for our Zoom conversation Saturday, September 6. A Zoom link will appear on the right of your screen once you RSVP. (NOTE: If you can’t get that link to work, copy and paste it into the search bar of your browser.) First-timers must sign up no later than Friday 9/5 in order to ensure being admitted.

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We've mostly been trained in a strict dualism regarding how things went down on our 19th century Western frontiers: toil and hardship to subdue the land versus letting its wealth go unrealized; a savage "uncivilized" way of life versus the blandishments of a "higher" culture and religion; manifest destiny or the trash heap of history. Complex documents such as Sugarcane know differently. Even though the larger, horrific and genocidal story involves mass Indigenous death and the destruction of cultures, along the sides and bubbling up from underneath the historical ground comes a hundred thousand and more human interactions whose impact can't be traced, let alone quantified.

Perhaps the most complex figure in the film is Williams Lake First Nation former Chief Rick Gilbert, an outwardly genial and reticent man of dizzying contradictions (who died in 2023). He was sexually abused as a student at Kamloops, where his mother had been raped as a girl. After some prodding by his wife Anna, he takes a DNA test, which establishes that his lineage includes heritage bearing the surname of one of the school’s priests. He can’t quite accept the results and wants more proof. And yet, he and Anna are devout Catholics. Upon learning of the church burnings in the area, they preemptively stow away relics from their local chapel. Rick is among those who travel to the Vatican. Speaking of the atrocities, Anna says, “Don’t blame the church. We don’t hold Jesus accountable for that. People are people.”

Much of the vibrancy of Sugarcane comes from its willingness to take the surface of life in what white racism once called "Indian country" on its own terms, while standing resolutely in judgment of past depredations and their consequences today: alcoholism, un- or underemployment, lack of educational opportunity, broken families, general anomie – the list goes on, and it's anyone's guess what keeps Native cultures afloat. One clue might be found where BraveCat son and father go on the road together, searching for answers to what ails them and their people. The bond they create over the engine's hum proves more resilient than they knew, carrying them onward into a realm of no-answer where the journey is enough. That can stand in as a metaphor for the work of grief, a wound that never closes but can lead us into a sustaining sense of life, whether justice, love, or both.

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TRAILER, RATINGS, EXTRAS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CisI_WFPDOk

Rotten Tomatoes: Tomatometer 100% of 68 reviews
Metacritic: Metascore 90 ("universal acclaim") based on 17 reviews, Must See

The school in question, the St. Joseph's Residential Indian School on Williams Lake near Kamloops, British Columbia, was the largest such facility in Canada. Enrollment topped 500 in the 1950s. In 2021, the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves sent a shockwave of rage and grief through every level of Canadian society, a cataclysm that will take years to resolve. In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada asserted the nation’s system of segregated church-run residential schools, the last of which closed in 1997, constituted “cultural genocide.” It estimated that at least 4,100 students died while attending the schools, many from abuse and disease.

At the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, Sugarcane was awarded the Grand Jury Prize for Best Direction. It received exclusive engagements at Manhattan's Film Forum and Toronto's TIFF Lightbox. The National Board of Review named it 2024's Best Documentary, and for the 97th Academy Awards it was nominated for Best Documentary Feature Film.

BLURBS & ATTITUDES
Even the landscape speaks to an emotional duality. It captivates with its natural beauty and sweep at the same time it tragically underscores the remoteness of places like St. Joseph’s, where evil could be kept secret. A more heartrending sense of majesty eventually rises, though, from what it takes for people to tell their tales, which involve cruelty, rape, disappearance, murder and suicide. ∞ Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

The film is an indictment of a cultural tragedy; a testament to the steadfastness, against all odds, of the Indigenous community; and a plea for healing. ∞ Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor

Sugarcane is deeply human, giving living, breathing faces and families to a history that, even when acknowledged, is too often rendered monolithic and impersonal. It begs the action of accountability, something so frequently symbolic rather than reparative, displayed through thin acknowledgments from Trudeau and a hollow offering of sympathy from Pope Francis – with no apology, compensation, or artifact returns to follow ... Even as it educates on the history of institutional cruelty, the film is less attuned to an overarching thesis on the oppressive powers. Instead, as “I love you” transitions to a traditional song, Sugarcane bursts with the acknowledgment that they are most concerned with the emotional and the personal: the preservation and healing of their communities, still standing despite it all. ∞ Peyton Robinson, *RogerEbert.com*

Sugarcane doesn’t force conclusions that aren’t there. Instead, it lets the empty parts of the saga linger so the ghosts of what transpired feel present. It means, ultimately, that Sugarcane is something more meaningful than a mere history lesson. It’s a portrait of what remains when injustice occurs. ∞ Esther Zuckerman, IndieWire