I almost didn’t want to write a review for Sugarcane, because what could I possibly say that could add to the incredible power and strength in this film?

But I want to talk about Sugarcane because everyone in this country should be talking about Sugarcane.

Sugarcane focuses initially through the father-son relationship of Ed Archie NoiseCat and his son (and co-director of the film) Julian Brave NoiseCat. The scope expands slowly, all tied to the former St. Joseph’s Mission.

With one line, Julian Brave NoiseCat sums up the intergenerational trauma of the residential school experience, to his father: “your story was of someone who was abandoned, but also someone who abandoned”

The damage was done, and the damage continues.

And with every moment that the survivors and their families allow us to witness, these real, intimate, heartbreaking moments, we see what this place did to the survivors. There are moments of truth so heartbreaking that to speak them in the safety of a close family moment or therapists office must be devastating, but they chose to share these memories with us. They chose to share them with us.

And we need to hear it now, urgently. Before the film debuted, one of the survivors who was featured in the film passed away.

Sugarcane’s power is in the investigation and facts, yes, but even more so, it is in the strength of the community that continues to fight to know the truth. To pull back the layers of their own pain and trauma, to know what really happened. And still, somehow, to find joy and healing wherever they can.

These survivors give us the most intimate glimpses of their pain, and it is the smallest piece of our responsibility to witness it.

The film ends reminding us that the last school closed in 1996, and St. Joseph’s was one of almost 130 residential schools in Canada. The magnitude of extrapolating out these heartbreaking stories of loss is utterly staggering. And we owe it to the survivors, and the ones who didn’t come home, to hear their story.

Sugarcane is playing at several independent theatres, and will be on streaming and available for digital download later this year. Please watch it.