OSCARS 2025: Sugarcane (2024)

Say what you will about the internet, an invention that has irrevocably made the world worse, but at least it's good at shining a light at injustices you otherwise probably wouldn't have heard about. How else would a pasty white dork like me, living in Bum Fuck Nowhere, America, have ever found out about the Canadian tradition of taking Indigenous children from their families and sticking them in state-run private schools? Schools that, it sadly almost goes without saying, treated them in horrendously abusive ways? Good to know that the Canadians were as adapt at atrocities against native people as we Americans were... You'll have to excuse my flippancy. When faced with man-made horrors depressingly very much within my comprehension, I tend to veer towards gallows' humor. Such a subject was likely to inspire a hard-hitting documentary eventually. That film has emerged this year, entitled “Sugarcane,” and I'm not too surprised that it scored an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature.

Near the Sugarcane Reservation in British Columbia resides the former site of the St. Joseph's Mission. One of many so-called "residential schools," the children of First Nation families were placed in these schools in an effort to "re-educate" them away from the life and culture they were born into. In 2021, a mass grave was found on the land of such a school, beginning a nationwide investigation into the abuse and mistreatment that went on in these institutions for decades. "Sugarcane" follows several survivors of St. Joseph's, as they consider the effects the childhood abuse has had on their lives and families. Some team with investigators in finding answers and digging up the past. Others simply hope to move on, reconnecting with their native backgrounds. One of the survivors attempts to meet with Pope Francis during his visit to British Columbia, in order to get the Vatican to acknowledge the Church's role in the abuse that went on at the schools. 

"Sugarcane" is, obviously, a hard watch at times. The film comes with a giant trigger warning for anyone sensitive to such subjects. Survivors of St. Joseph's, many of whom are already elderly now, frankly describe the physical and sexual abuse they suffered through and the fallout it had on their lives. Some ran away from the school and reservations. Others developed substance abuse problems later in life to cope. One difficult scene has a father, who lived through St. Joseph's, admit to his son that he had a fucked-up childhood only for the boy to counter that, because of his dad's trauma, his childhood was broken too. Horrible events such as what happened at St. Joseph's always cast wide ripples. Some have devoted significant time and effort to exposing the horrors of the schools, unable to move past those scars. This makes "Sugarcane" a heart-breaking watch, a showcase of the lingering effects of a hideous institution and the fight to bring that truth to light. 

Which raises another question, one I often find myself asking when reviewing documentaries about real life atrocities: To what end are these events being documented? "Sugarcane" spends time with the activists and investigators. They attempt to get government acknowledgement of the crimes, while fighting off abusive e-mails from those against their cause. They poke their cameras around the remains of St. Joseph's, finding relics of the events that happened there and the people who lived through them. (And those that didn't.) Injustices such as these must be exposed. Those responsible must be held accountable. The Catholic Church's policy of simply moving predatory clergy to other places is brought up again, a clear sign of how the powerful would rather cover-up crimes than bring them to justice. 

However, the way the filmmakers involve themselves in the lives of the survivors gives me pause. "Sugarcane" is a film desperately in search of resolution when none can be found. You can tell the whole world about the horrors of the residential schools. You should. It's not going to heal the broken lives of the Indigenous youths who attended them. It's not going to bring back those that were killed. Nothing can undo what happened. Unsurprisingly, the man who wants to confront the Pope doesn't get very far. One of the final scenes of "Sugarcane" has the filmmakers bringing a wheelchair bound woman back to the school and asking her to point out the buildings where the abuse happened. At this point, the film veers towards exploitative. What are the moral responsibilities of documentarians towards their subjects? 

"Sugarcane" makes an effort to give us a wider peek at the lives of these men and women, to show that they have survived, that they have joy in their lives, that not everything is defined solely by what they went through as children. It never quite comes together and "Sugarcane" feels somewhat shapeless, splitting time between the different people it follows. Yet there's no turning away from the past and how it defined everything that comes after. Are we being asked to observe these subjects in order to understand the crimes that occurred, the system that created them, in hopes of preventing anything like this from happening again? Or is the film asking Indigenous people to retraced the paths of their suffering in order to make the white critics who will watch "Sugarcane" feel bad? It's a complicated question to answer. 

I suppose you can debate to what degree documentaries, as a genre, exploit the people they capture on film. "Sugarcane" is streaming on Hulu. The corporations that distributed the film – Variance Films and National Geographic, a subsidiary of Disney – will promote it as an Academy Award nominated film, in hopes of drawing eyeballs to their subscription service. Is that the best way to honor the victims of the residential school? Would the filmmakers winning a shiny statue from a bunch of industry insiders in Hollywood do anything to make the lives of the people chronicled here any better? I hope participating in "Sugarcane" was a healing experience for the survivors of St. Joseph's. I hope it brought them solace. I hope it brings attention and funds towards exposing these events, preventing them from happening again, and providing any sort of compensation towards those that remain. It's a moving film, well made and powerful, and I'm completely uncertain how to feel about it. "Sugarcane" is an example of a film I must abstain from giving a rating to, as that feels disrespectful to the people featured within and their stories, and simply don't know how to feel about the approach the filmmakers took. [-/10]