“Sugarcane,” an award-winning Canadian documentary billed as an investigation into “a pattern of infanticide” in a B.C. residential school, has been short-listed for a 2025 Academy Award. Unfortunately, the film fails to deliver on its premise, revealing no evidence for even a single infanticide at a residential school, let alone a “pattern.”

In media interviews, Sugarcane’s director and producer Emily Kassie recalls being “gut-pulled” to her project by the 2021 “discovery of unmarked graves” at the Kamloops residential school. Having seen a news story about a search for missing children by the Williams Lake First Nation at the nearby St. Joseph’s Mission residential school, which had been established in 1891 by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Kassie approached them. They were amenable to collaboration.