Julian Brave NoiseCat is among the Canadians up for Oscars as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced its nominees Thursday morning.

NoiseCat, a writer, filmmaker, and activist from B.C.’s Canim Lake Band Tsq’secen of the Secwepemc Nation, and New York-based producer and journalist Emily Kassie, received a Best Documentary Feature nod for their film Sugarcane.

Sugarcane (2024) Trailer

Sugarcane, which NoiseCat and Kassie co-directed, follows the search for unmarked graves at St. Joseph’s Mission, a former Indian residential school in Williams Lake, B.C. where NoiseCat’s father was born.

Lily Gladstone, the first Native American actress to be nominated for Best Actress at last year’s Academy Awards, boarded the project as Executive Producer. NoiseCat is purported to be the first Indigenous North American director to receive an Oscar nomination.

The film was nominated for a Grand Jury prize at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and won the Directing Award in the U.S. Documentary category. It also picked up accolades at the Seattle International Film Festival, Sarasota Film Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, and the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards where it won both Best True Crime Documentary and Best Political Documentary.

Among other Canadian nominees heading into this year’s awards are the team attached to Dune: Part Two, directed by Quebec-born filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. The sequel to 2021’s Dune is a contender in the Best Picture category, while the film’s production design team – Montreal’s Patrice Vermette and Shane Vieau, who hails from Dartmouth, NS – received a nomination for Best Production Design. Vieau is a previous winner in the category for 2017 Guillermo del Toro romantic fantasy, The Shape of Water, while Vermette was recognized for the first instalment of Dune in 2022.