Sugarcane (film)

Sugarcane follows an investigation into Saint Joseph's Indian Residential School, an Indian residential school located near Williams Lake, British Columbia, igniting a reckoning in the lives of survivors and descendants.^[6][7]

The film received grants from Catapult Film Fund and the International Documentary Association Enterprise Fund.^[8][9][10] Lily Gladstone boarded the project as an executive producer.^[11]

It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2024.^[12] It also played at the 2024 San Francisco International Film Festival, 2024 Seattle International Film Festival,^[13] the 2024 Sheffield International Documentary Festival,^[14] the 2024 Sydney Film Festival,^[15] the 2024 DOXA Documentary Film Festival,^[16] the 2024 Nantucket Film Festival,^[17] the 2024 Boston Independent Film Festival,^[18] the 2024 Sarasota Film Festival,^[19] the 2024 Maryland Film Festival,^[20] the 2024 Cleveland International Film Festival,^[21] and the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.^[22]

In February 2024, National Geographic Documentary Films acquired distribution rights to the film.^[23] It was later announced that the film would be screened in exclusive engagements at the Film Forum in Manhattan and TIFF Lightbox in Toronto starting August 9, 2024, followed by the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles starting August 16; an expansion to other cities in the United States and Canada will gradually take place starting August 16. Variance Films and Films We Like serve as co-distributors in the United States and Canada respectively.^[24][25]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of 65 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.9/10. The website's consensus reads: "Accumulating immense emotional power as it methodically uncovers a grave injustice, Sugarcane is one of the most compelling and important documentaries of the year."^[26] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 90 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".^[27]