• By Mabel Pais

SUGARCANE

Directors: Julian Brave NoiseCat & Emily Kassie; 2024; Documentary; English & Secwepemctsín; 107m

Winner: U.S. Directing Award, Sundance Film Festival 2024

“[A] stunning and brutal look at the lasting trauma of the St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School, a government-funded institution run by the Catholic Church where indigenous children were sent with the aim of stripping them of the connection to their culture… It’s a portrait of what remains when injustice occurs.” – Esther Zuckerman, IndieWire

‘SUGARCANE’ is a stunning tribute to the resilience of Native people and their way of life, the debut feature documentary from Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie.  It is an epic cinematic portrait of a community during a moment of international reckoning. Set amidst a ground-breaking investigation of abuse and death at an Indigenous residential school, the film empowers participants to break cycles of intergenerational trauma by bearing witness to painful, long-ignored truths and the love that endures within their families despite the revelation of genocide.

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

When Kassie – a journalist and filmmaker – asked her old friend and colleague, NoiseCat, to direct a film documenting the Williams Lake first investigation of St. Joseph’s mission, she never imagined just how close this story was to his own family. As the investigation continued, Emily and Julian traveled to the rivers, forests and mountains of his homeland to hear the myriad stories of survivors. During production, Julian’s own story became an integral part of this beautiful multi-stranded portrait of a community. By offering space, time and profound empathy, the directors unearthed what was hidden.

Kassie and NoiseCat encountered both the extraordinary pain these individuals had to suppress as a tool for survival  and a unique beauty of a group of people finding the strength to persevere.

 

Release: Opens at Film Forum, New York City on August 9.

GIRLS WILL BE GIRLS

Director: Shuchi Talati; 2024; English & Hindi; 117m

2024 Sundance Film Festival Prize-Winner:

                                  World Cinema Drama Audience Award,

                                 Special Jury Award for Acting (Preeti Panigrahi)

“With her first feature, Talati expertly captures the quiet wonder and aching intensity of adolescence, first love, and caring about someone whose dueling duties and desires sometimes stop them from behaving as they know they should.”  indieWire – January 24, 2024 – Proma Khosla

A model student, 16-year-old Mira (Preeti Panigrahi in a radiant debut performance) is the first-ever female prefect in charge of enforcing rules at a straitlaced Indian boarding school in the Himalayas. Despite her ambition and primness, she can’t help but fall for new student Sri (Kesav Binoy Kiron), and steals away with him to flirt and stargaze. With frankness and sensitivity, writer-director Shuchi Talati uncovers the contradictory layers of Mira’s sexual awakening, the school’s lax penalties for boys’ transgressive behavior, and the complicated feelings triggered in her protective, unfulfilled mother (Kani Kusruti, star of 2024 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix-winner ‘All We Imagine as Light’).

Release: Opens on September 13 at Film Forum, New York City.

(Mabel Pais writes on Social Issues, The Arts and Entertainment, Spirituality, Cuisine, Health & Wellness, Business, and Education)