Oscar candidate ‘Sugarcane’ secures NatGeo, Disney+ and Huly premieres

EXCLUSIVE: Sugar canethe Oscar-winning documentary about the horrific legacy of Indian residential schools in North America, will debut on National Geographic on Monday, December 9, followed by a streaming launch on Disney+ and Hulu the next day.

The movie directed by Julian Brave NoiseCat And Emily Kassie has won more than a dozen awards at festivals, including Sundance, where it won the Directing Award for US Documentary. On Monday, the film was nominated for Best Documentary at the Gotham Awards, and last week it earned a whopping eight nominations for the Critics Choice Documentary Awards. It is named after both the DOC NYC and the IDA shortlists of the best documentaries of the year.

The soundtrack of Sugar caneby Indigenous composer Mali Obomsawin (Odanak First Nation), will be released on December 10 by Hollywood Records, making it available wherever music is sold and streamed. The film focuses on an investigation into the discovery of possible mass graves at St. Joseph’s Indian Residential School in British Columbia, an institution run by the Catholic Church where generations of indigenous children were sexually, physically and psychologically abused. The film reveals evidence that priests impregnated some girls at the school and burned their babies after the girls gave birth.

The US had an even larger system of Indian boarding schools than Canada, most of which were run by Christian denominations, where child abuse also flourished. The purpose of the schools in the US 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 caused by the residential school system, which ran from 1819 until at least 1969.

“As president of the United States of America, I apologize for what we did,” Biden said. “The federal Indian boarding school policy, the pain it has caused, will always remain a significant mark of shame, a stain on American history.”

Filmmakers Kassie and NoiseCat attended Biden’s speech on the Gila Indian Reservation. “The President’s formal apology to the survivors and their families is a true 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 a great honor for us Sugar cane to be part of the conversation in this moment, moving it forward and acting as a catalyst for dialogue.”

Sugar cane was released nationwide in theaters in the US and Canada this summer. The filmmakers also went on a screening tour with the film to First Nations and tribal communities in North America. “These ‘Rez Tour’ screenings provide Indigenous communities with an accessible, intimate and safe way to view the film before its release on streaming,” said a press release from Documentary films from National Geographic. “Each screening is organized in coordination with First Nations and tribal community leaders and highlights local or regional resources and health supports for Indigenous peoples and families affected by residential schools in Canada and Indian boarding schools in the United States. The Sugar cane ‘Rez Tour’ began just weeks after the Department of the Interior released its latest Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report, which found that nearly 1,000 children died in more than 400 U.S. federally funded schools — three times as many as operated in Canada.”

Academy Award nominated actress Lily Gladstone, of Siksikaitsitapi and Nimiipuu heritage, recently joined Sugar cane as executive producer, alongside fellow EPs Bill Way, Elliott Whitton, Jenny Raskin, Geralyn White Dreyfous, 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 is executive producer for National Geographic Documentary Films.

The director of photography for Sugar cane 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 arrived Bobi Wine: the people’s presidentdirected by Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp. It has earned nominations in that category in recent years Fire of lovedirected by Sara Dosa, The Cavedirected by Feras Fayyad, and won the 2019 Oscar (as well as six Emmys) for Free SoloJimmy Chin and E. Chai Vasarhelyi’s documentary about climber Alex Honnold, who climbed Yosemite’s treacherous El Capitan cliff face without ropes.