8/12 ForReel Score | 3.5/ Stars

Before moving to Canada five years ago, my knowledge on residential schools was as limited as my knowledge on Iran Contra, Abu Ghraib, or the Cambodian genocide; which is to say, my understanding was shallow, overly generalized, and entirely self-taught. None of the knowledge I possessed came from the American education system, of which I am a product, and nearly all of it came from the media I consumed. Over the years, I’ve dedicated myself to learning about the atrocities that occurred to Indigenous peoples across Canada, especially in local residential schools to my now home, British Columbia. And, of course, movies and television have played a great part in that education.

Now, the Oscar nominated documentary Sugarcane will serve as the jumping off point for many beginning the educational journey I set out on a few years ago. Helmed by Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat (in their directorial debut, nonetheless), Sugarcane investigates the aftermath of the abuse and disappearances that occurred at Saint Joseph’s Mission, a residential school in central British Columbia. While the film tracks just three family’s stories from a single school, Sugarcane is representative of a struggle familiar to indigenous communities across North America: the pursuit of justice in the face of futility.

It’s not necessarily a spoiler to say that this process doesn’t pan out to definitive results. Most of those directly responsible for the atrocities committed at Saint Joseph’s have passed, and the ones that remain deny any knowledge or accountability.

Thus, the hunt for justice for Charlene Belleau, who was just a little girl during her abuse at the hands of the Catholic school, is less about “results” and more about the catharsis that such a powerful journey entails. Likewise, Sugarcane reserve’s late Chief Rick Gilbert attempts to find restitution in a trip to the Vatican, where his story (along with hundreds of similar ones from across Canada) was ceremoniously heard and all but dismissed by Pope Francis. “Bye bye,” the Pope says cheerfully at the conclusion of their meeting. It is, as both a viewer and fellow human, a deeply troubling and painful experience to witness.

That difficulty comes to define Sugercane, both for better and for worse. As a documentary, its story is only as cohesive as reality — and that is rarely ever cohesive. It is able to capture the traumatic troubles that still plague these survivors and their families beautifully. There is no shortage of raw emotion in its family and community scenes, all of which is captured beautifully by the camera of Emily Kassie, who also served as cinematographer. And while those scenes are edited together superbly by Maya Daisy Hawke (in her follow-up to Navalny), Sugarcane, as a whole, can still feel scattered and deflating, seemingly weighed down by the emotion of the journey we are on together.

That isn’t to say that it isn’t worthwhile. Contrarily, the most effective way to see others’ trauma is often by sitting in it with them, in all of its disorienting and painful confusion. In these regards, Sugarcane is a worthy document of the genocide it covers.

While there are many Canadian films that have recently tackled this overlooked portion of modern history (Twice Colonized; Bones of Crows, which was later adapted into a limited series), none have done so with such a palpable impact. I may have learned more while watching other films, but I haven’t felt the history in as visceral a way as I did when the film dug deep into the connection between Ed Archie NoiseCat’s infancy and Saint Joseph’s. NoiseCat, the father of filmmaker Julian Brave, is a living testament to the power of personal trauma, generational trauma, and lifelong resiliency.

Sugarcane operates at its finest when it is able to capture the intersection of trauma and resilience in its most lived-in moments. As a work of historical documentary, it is finely educational, if not a bit lost in the overwhelming history of the residential school genocide. But it excels when it goes beyond what can be “taught.” For sitting with these families, as they process, personally, what has been done to them — that will teach you more with feeling than you could ever learn otherwise.

Movie Review: "Sugarcane" Grapples With A Painful History In A Beautiful Way