Classic: "Sugarcane" with Julian Brave Noisecat & Emily Kassie

Top Docs: Award-Winning Documentary Filmmakers

Today we are repeating one of our favorite conversations. Mike spoke with the filmmakers of "Sugarcane" at Sundance 2024. They would go on to win the Grand Jury award for Directing at that festival, and then would be nominated for the 97th Academy Awards last year.

If you enjoy this conversation, you may want to check out our "Anatomy of a scene from Sugarcane."

Kicking off our on-the-ground coverage of Sundance 2024, Julian Brave Noisecat and Emily Kassie join Mike to discuss their new film, “Sugarcane”.

In this film, they explore the legacy of the St. Joseph Mission, one of many segregated residential schools promulgated by the Canadian government run by the Catholic Church. The stories they tell are deeply personal (both Julian’s grandmother and father attended St. Joseph’s) as well illustrative of a wider history of abuse within the schools. As they explain, they deploy and reshape various filmic conventions–the Western, archival, the travel doc–in innovative ways to do justice to the lives and stories of their subject. The result is a many-layered testament to survival despite deep, still ongoing pain.

Thanks to Amos Cochran of Edit/Score for hosting our 2024 Sundance interviews. Edit/Score is a new music library with an innovative approach to finding music for your film. Listen to the library and learn more at editscoremusic.com

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