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Sugarcane

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Rohan Naahar

Sugarcane
Rohan Naahar
The Indian Express
An Oscar wouldn’t be enough for this searing documentary about a grave social injustice

Stunning in every sense of the word, the new documentary film explores the lasting pain caused by a culture of silence in the Catholic church.

Perhaps the year’s most striking documentary, Sugarcane is billed as an ‘investigation’ into the crimes that were committed by Catholic missionaries against Indigenous peoples of Canada across a century, but it is equally successful as an examination of inherited trauma, and as a study of a community in crisis. At the beginning of the 20th Century, schools were set up specifically for Indigenous children across North America, ostensibly to help them assimilate into Western culture. The children were subjected to unspeakable crimes at these ‘residential’ institutions, operated exclusively by the Catholic church, causing many of them to take their lives as they grew older. The magnitude of the tragedy, which is revealed gradually throughout the film, is immeasurable.

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