One of the year’s best reviewed and most honored films (including at the Cinema Eye Honors, Critics Choice Documentary Awards, Gotham Awards and Sundance), “Sugarcane” is a blazing debut documentary from journalists Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie.
The project began as an investigation into the abuse and murder of Indigenous children at Catholic boarding schools in Canada, then acquired a deeper and more personal resonance as NoiseCat explored the past history and present pain of his own family.
The two filmmakers spoke to TheWrap about their film’s cinematic power and how the production could be a catalyst for deeper investigations into the truth. “Sugarcane” begins streaming on National Geographic on Dec. 9, and Disney+ and Hulu on Dec. 10.
The title refers to a First Nations reserve in British Columbia, but what else does Sugarcane stand for?
Julian Brave NoiseCat: I think it’s kind of bold to give the film a one-word title that doesn’t necessarily tell people exactly what it’s about. And also, within the narrative traditions of the Shuswap people, in whose land the film is set, the names of places often relate to stories. So the title is a way to express how the story is tied to this place, within the tradition of the people who it is about.
Emily Kassie: And the name “Sugarcane” also has a kind of texture to it. It’s evocative. The feeling of that word echoed the feeling of the world we were creating and a story that’s not just about an individual or a moment but about a place in a community.
There’s an astonishing merger of journalism and cinema here. The film chronicles an investigation yet also features a narrative arc, thoughtful foreshadowing and profound metaphorical images.
Kassie: While preparing, we looked at everything from “Do the Right Thing,” with its multi-character narrative, to [Romanian documentary] “Collective.” We felt the only way to get to the journalistic truth and to the emotional truth of this story was to transport people deep into this world. And this is a vibrant, epic world worthy of this type of cinematic storytelling, which isn’t usually seen in this “true crime” form.
Noisecat: We felt it was essential for audiences to understand the enduring legacy and trauma of these institutions, as well as the incredible resilience and beauty within the people and families that endured the trauma. The really powerful thing about cinema is that it can be a full-body sensory storytelling experience, as opposed to just words. And that makes people feel and really live in this world and experience it for an hour and 45 minutes, which was what we set out to do.
Kassie: Yeah, we wanted to stir something in a deep, guttural and emotional place. We didn’t want audiences to just know what happened intellectually, but to know what happened in their soul and under their skin. Cinema can do that.
The film addresses the crime of infanticide, sometimes in graphic terms. How did you handle that artistically, knowing it’s so difficult for audiences to grapple with?
NoiseCat: I was incredibly nervous about the audience’s reaction because part of the audience is my family. And this is a story that touches on the circumstance of my father’s birth. So it was something that we treated with incredible care and we approached it very slowly and cautiously during production and in the editing.
Kassie: In the edit, we thought carefully about how to drip information and to prepare people to take this in when it’s finally discovered, to really allow the audience to know Julian and his dad as they piece together little bits of the story. We wanted to bring people along with us in a way that they could handle.
NoiseCat: I’m just grateful to Emily and the rest of our team for giving me the space to navigate this with my family in a very cautious way. A big fear of mine was that we would handle these things in a way that might harm other people. For example, there’s a conversation between my grandmother and my dad in the film. I took a very, very close look at that and then we talked about how to handle it.
Kassie: It felt kind of fated, in some ways, that what was being discovered in the investigation happened to line up with what Julian and his father were discovering about their own story. And this is the first film which has publicly shown evidence and testimony of a pattern of infanticide at one of these schools. Of course, we’ve heard stories of similar practices that have still not yet been investigated at other schools. We hope that this film is a catalyst for more of that.
A version of this story first appeared in the SAG Preview/Documentaries/ International issue of TheWrap awards magazine.
Read more from the SAG Preview/Documentaries/International issue here.
