Sugarcane

A stunning tribute to the resilience of Native people. Set amidst a ground-breaking investigation into abuse and death at a Canadian Native residential school, the film empowers to break cycles of intergenerational trauma by bearing witness to long-ignored truths. Epic cinematic portrait of a community.

In 2021, evidence of unmarked graves near an Indian residential school run by the Catholic Church in Canada sparked a national outcry. It uncovered the forced separation, assimilation, and abuse many children experienced at this network of segregated boarding schools. It was designed to slowly destroy the culture and social fabric of Indigenous communities.  

When journalist and filmmaker Emily Kassie asked her old friend and colleague Julian Brave NoiseCat to direct a film documenting the investigation, she never imagined just how close this story was to his own family. As the investigation continued, Emily and Julian travelled back to the rivers, forests and mountains of his homelands to hear the myriad stories of survivors. Gradually, Julian’s own story becomes an integral part of this beautiful, multi-stranded portrait of a community.