sugarcane – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

MOVIE OF THE WEEK January 7, 2025: FAVORITE 2024 OSCAR CONTENDERS

January 5, 2025January 6, 2025 Jennifer Merin betsy bozdech, Cate Marquis, Conclave, Fancy Dance, jennifer merin, leslie combemale, liz whittemore, loren king, motw, movie awards, Movie of the Week, nell minow, oscars, Pam Grady, sandie angulo chen, September 5, sherin nicole, Sing Sing, sugarcane, The Brutalist, The Wild Robot, Wicked (Part One)

In recent years, the presentation of movie awards has grown into an industry unto itself. And, awards season has expanded in duration to include more than the entire year. It starts in January with awards buzz erupting out of Sundance Film Festival — even before the previous year’s awards season has culminated with the Oscars gala presentation that’s staged in early March. It’s a struggle to keep up with the countless award-eligible movies that are are released throughout the year or seen at film festivals, and awards voters list, discuss and advocate for the titles they think are award-worthy. But the biggest rush release of high profile potential awards contenders occurs in the Fall, accompanied by invitations to special screenings, distribution of FYC screeners, scripts, music scores and other collateral — not to mention swag — to give awards voters lead time to see films before they make their nominations. The infusion of new titles can cut consideration of earlier releases as contenders and indie films without award campaign budgets all but disappear from view. At the height of the season, viewing potential nominees becomes a temporary full time job for awards voters, including AWFJ members. At AWFJ, determining our EDA Awards nominees involves the elimination of titles in order to reach consensus. But even after consensus is reached, everyone has personal favorites that may or may not have landed on the list of nominees. This week, Team MOTW members recommend their favorite award contenders for your watch list.

Reviews

SUGARCANE – Review by Diane Carson

August 21, 2024August 21, 2024 Diane Carson canadian films., Charlene Belleau, CHILD ABUSE, documentary, Emilie Kassie, Julian Brave NoiseCat, motw, National Geographic, St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School, sugarcane, williams lake

The title Sugarcane suggests a sweet indulgence. That is decidedly not the case in the identified location, the Sugarcane Reserve, where investigation uncovers Indigenous men’s and women’s unmarked graves discovered in 2021 at the nearby Indian residential school. At facilities run by the Catholic Church, physical and sexual abuse, deaths, and murders were common and ignored when reported. In their poetic documentary, directors Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie pursue the truth of the horrendous circumstances that prevailed at British Columbia’s St. Joseph’s Mission, a place intended, as the founder of U.S. Native American boarding schools, Richard Henry Pratt, proclaimed, “to kill the Indian, and save the man.”

Movie of the Week

MOVIE OF THE WEEK: August 9, 2024: SUGARCANE

August 4, 2024January 23, 2025 Jennifer Merin betsy bozdech, canadian films., Cate Marquis, Charlene Belleau, CHILD ABUSE, documentary, Emilie Kassie, jennifer merin, Julian Brave NoiseCat, leslie combemale, liz whittemore, loren king, motw, Movie of the Week, National Geographic, nell minow, nikki fowler, Pam Grady, sandie angulo chen, St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School, sugarcane, williams lake

The power of memory and the lasting impact of trauma are at the heart of Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat’s harrowing documentary Sugarcane. As it follows the investigation into nearly a century of abuse inside a Canadian Indian residential school, the film makes it clear how important it is to face the truth — as painful as it might be — head on so that you can shine a light on it and, hopefully, move toward justice.

Reviews

SUGARCANE – Review by Loren King

July 29, 2024August 11, 2024 Loren King canadian films., Charlene Belleau, CHILD ABUSE, documentary, Emilie Kassie, Julian Brave NoiseCat, motw, National Geographic, St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School, sugarcane, williams lake

Mixing a gutting grassroots investigation with personal and collective reckoning of heinous crimes committed by Catholic priests at St. Joseph’s Mission Indian residential school in British Columbia, Sugarcane is unforgettable storytelling and a compassionate testament to resiliency. Sugarcane is layered with voices of the survivors and the silenced. Like last year’s powerful and poetic documentary Lakota Nation vs. the United States which exposed and countered history’s lies, it is at once a reckoning and a plea for reconciliation.

Reviews

SUGARCANE – Review by Liz Whittemore

July 29, 2024August 11, 2024 Liz Whittemore canadian films., Charlene Belleau, documentary, Emilie Kassie, Julian Brave NoiseCat, motw, National Geographic, St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School, sugarcane

Filmmakers Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie delve into the long enduring multigenerational trauma of the Indigenous population caused by their abusive experiences at residential schools. Their compelling documentary, Sugarcane, is here to educate the masses by exposing the unspeakable atrocities perpetuated by the government and the Catholic Church across four generations. Sugarcane gives a voice to survivors and to those who are no longer here to tell their stories. Noisecat and Kessie’s documentary presents a lesson that should be mandatory for every classroom.

Reviews

SUGARCANE – Review by Jennifer Merin

July 29, 2024August 11, 2024 Jennifer Merin canadian films., Charlene Belleau, CHILD ABUSE, documentary, Emilie Kassie, Julian Brave NoiseCat, motw, National Geographic, St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School, sugarcane, williams lake

Sugarcane is a hard-hitting documentary about the abuse of Indigenous children at the St Joseph’s Residential Mission School in Williams Lake, British Columbia. Run by the Catholic Church from 1891 to 1991, the school housed children whom government officials removed from families that were dwelling in some 40 native communities. The objective was to teach the children to abandon their own culture and language and to indoctrinate them to behave and think like White people. Unfortunately and unforgivably, that indoctrination often entailed unacceptably cruel punishments like isolation, brutal beatings, sexual abuse and, even, infanticide. The children had absolutely no recourse and the suffering they endured at the hands of the government’s rigid bureaucrats and the mission’s twisted prelates has lasted until today.

Reviews

SUGARCANE – Review by Nikki Fowler

July 29, 2024August 11, 2024 Nikki Fowler canadian films., Charlene Belleau, CHILD ABUSE, documentary, Emilie Kassie, Julian Brave NoiseCat, motw, National Geographic, St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School, sugarcane, williams lake

Directors Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat chronicle an investigation into a Canadian, Catholic run, Indigenous boarding school of ‘horror’ and those affected by the suffering, murder and abuse inflicted on young innocent children who were being held there against their will under racist conditions. Taken from their homes in an attempt to convert them to a white ideology, the young children were stripped from their cultural identity. The filmmakers follow the investigation specifically into the lives lost at St Joseph’s Residential Mission School in Williams Lake, British Columbia from 1891 to 1991 as they search to uncover burial sites where the victims of infanticide were disposed of.