There wasn’t a dry eye in the house at the Sundance Film Festival premiere of the new documentary “Sugarcane” on Saturday. As the lights came up when the screening at the Library theater ended, the audience’s thunderous applause erupted into a standing ovation while filmmakers Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie took the stage and embraced through tears.
The documentary, screening in the U.S. Documentary Competition section at Sundance, explores the intergenerational trauma from the residential school system in Canada, in which Native children were removed from their families and overseen by Catholic priests and nuns to “get the Indian out.”