EXCLUSIVE: Sugarcane, the Oscar-contending documentary about the horrifying legacy of Indian Residential Schools in North America, will make its debut on National Geographic on Monday, December 9, followed the next day by a streaming launch on Disney+ and Hulu.
The film directed by Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie has earned over a dozen awards at festivals including Sundance, where it won the Directing Award for U.S. Documentary. On Monday, it was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Gotham Awards, and last week the film earned a leading 8 nominations for the Critics Choice Documentary Awards. It has been named to both the DOC NYC and the IDA shortlists of the year’s best documentary features.
‘Sugarcane’ composer Mali Obomsawin
Photo by Jared Lank
The soundtrack to Sugarcane, by Indigenous composer Mali Obomsawin (Odanak First Nation), will be released by Hollywood Records on Dec. 10, making it available wherever music is sold and streamed. The film centers on an investigation into the discovery of possible unmarked graves at the St. Joseph’s Indian Residential School in British Columbia, an institution run by the Catholic Church where generations of Indigenous children suffered sexual, physical and psychological abuse. The film uncovers evidence that priests impregnated some girls at the school and after the girls gave birth, incinerated their babies.
The U.S. maintained an even larger system of Indian boarding schools than Canada, most of them run by Christian denominations, where abuse of children also flourished. The intent of the schools in the U.S. and Canada was to deprive Indigenous children of their language and culture and force them to adopt the norms of white society. On Friday, President Biden traveled to the Gila Indian Reservation in Arizona to reckon with the damage done by the residential school system, which ran from 1819 until at least 1969.
President Biden speaks at the Gila River Crossing School in the Gila River Indian Community, near Phoenix, Arizona on October 25, 2024.
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
“I formally apologize as president of the United States of America for what we did,” Biden said. “The federal Indian boarding school policy, the pain it has caused, will always be a significant mark of shame, a blot on American history.”
Filmmakers Kassie and NoiseCat attended Biden’s speech at the Gila Indian Reservation. “The President’s formal apology to survivors and their families is a real testament to the significance of what happened to children at Native American Boarding Schools and Indian Residential Schools in the U.S. and Canada,” they said in a statement. “This is a foundational story for North America so it’s such an honor for Sugarcane to be part of the conversation at this moment, pushing it forward and acting as a catalyst for dialogue.”
St. Joseph’s Mission Indian Residential School
Sugarcane Film LLC/National Geographic Documentary Films
Sugarcane was released in theaters nationwide in the U.S. and Canada this summer. In addition, the filmmakers went on a screening tour with the film to First Nations and Tribal communities across North America. “These ‘Rez Tour’ screenings offer Indigenous communities an accessible, intimate, and safe way to watch the film prior to its streaming release,” according to a release from National Geographic Documentary Films. “Each screening is organized in coordination with First Nations and Tribal community leaders and highlights local or regional resources and health support for Indigenous Peoples and families who have been impacted by residential schools in Canada and Indian boarding schools in the United States. The Sugarcane ‘Rez Tour’ began just weeks after the Department of the Interior released its most recent Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report, which found that nearly 1,000 children died at the more than 400 schools funded by the U.S. federal government — three-times as many as operated in Canada.”
Sugarcane is a Kassie Films and Hedgehog Films production, in association with Impact Partners and Fit Via Vi. The film is produced by Kassie and Oscar nominee Kellen Quinn (Time).
Academy Award-nominated actress Lily Gladstone, who is of Siksikaitsitapi and Nimiipuu heritage, recently joined Sugarcane as an executive producer, alongside fellow EPs Bill Way, Elliott Whitton, Jenny Raskin, Geralyn White Dreyfous, Nina Fialkow, Tegan Acton, Emma Pompetti, Grace Lay, Sumalee Montano, Sabrina Merage Naim, Douglas Choi, Adam and Melony Lewis, Meadow Fund, JanaLee Cherneski and Ian Desai, David and Linda Cornfield, Maida Lynn, and Robina Riccitiello. The film’s co-executive producers are Kelsey Koenig, Lauren Haber, Meryl Metni and Jennifer Pelling. Carolyn Bernstein serves as executive producer for National Geographic Documentary Films.
Rick Gilbert, a survivor of St. Joseph’s Mission, tends to the Catholic cemetery on the grounds of the school.
Christopher LaMarca/Sugarcane Film LLC/National Geographic
The director of photography for Sugarcane is Christopher LaMarca, and the cinematographer is Emily Kassie. The film is edited by Nathan Punwar and Maya Daisy Hawke, with music by Mali Obomsawin.
National Geographic’s most recent Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature came for Bobi Wine: The People’s President, directed by Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp. It has earned nominations in that category in recent years for Fire of Love, directed by Sara Dosa, The Cave, directed by Feras Fayyad, and it won the Oscar in 2019 (as well as six Emmys) for Free Solo, Jimmy Chin and E. Chai Vasarhelyi’s documentary about climber Alex Honnold, who scaled Yosemite’s treacherous El Capitan rock face without ropes.
