Residential School Documentary 'Sugarcane' Wins Directing Award at Sundance Film Festival

A critically acclaimed film spotlighting Canadian residential schools took home The Directing Award: U.S. Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this week.

Filmmakers and journalists Julian Brave NoiseCat (Canim Lake Band Tsq'escen) and Emily Kassie created an investigative documentary, "Sugarcane," which chronicles past abuses and a current search for missing children at an Indian residential school in British Columbia, nearby Sugarcane Indian Reserve.

The film examines NoiseCat's personal connection to the school where his father was born and attended and also his communities' movement towards reckoning and healing from intergenerational trauma stemming from residential schools. Additionally, the documentary chronicles the self-reflection of the First Nation's former chief, Ricket Gilbert. Gilbert was part of a coalition of First Nations leaders and residential school survivors who traveled to the Vatican to meet with the Pope in 2022, after which the Pope visited Canada to apologize for the "evil" committed by so many Christians against Indigenous peoples.

https://nativenewsonline.net/arts-entertainment/residential-school-documentary-sugarcane-wins-directing-award-at-sundance-film-festival