EXCLUSIVE: Justin Ducharme has begun manufacturing on debut function Seventeen, revolving across the lives of three Indigenous intercourse employees in Vancouver.

The manufacturing has additionally unveiled its buzzy Indigenous forged that includes Nizhonniya Austin (The Curse), Taio Gelinas (Avatar: The Final Airbender, Beans), Kaniehtiio Horn (Seeds, Alice Darling, Reservation Canines), Shannon Baker (Bones of Crows) and newcomer, singer, mannequin, and human rights advocate Aalayna.

Set over the course of seventeen hours, the movie follows three Indigenous intercourse employees whose lives intersect via likelihood, relation and the shared expertise of familial and colonial displacement.

Author, filmmaker and curator Ducharme, who hails from the Métis neighborhood of St. Ambroise on Treaty 1 Territory, has tapped into his personal experiences for the screenplay.

“I’m very excited to be off the bottom and dealing on Seventeen with such an incredible forged and crew. This challenge has been lengthy in growth with the help and inclusion of my neighborhood of City Indigenous kin and intercourse employees situated right here on these Unceded Coast Salish Territories,” stated Ducharme.

The director is referring to territories inhabited by the indigenous Coast Salish peoples for 1000’s of years and claimed by the British Crown within the late 18th Century and early nineteenth Century with out their permission, which incorporates land on which Vancouver is now constructed.

“Being an experiential intercourse employee myself, my storytelling has aimed to seize the ability that happens inside the intersections of Indigenous sexual sovereignty and chosen household relations, Seventeen is an extension of those ideas and I can’t wait to share it with audiences.” 

Ducharme beforehand made waves with brief movies Positions and The Dancer, which screened at festivals akin to ImagineNATIVE, Asinabka, BFI Flare, Outfest Fusion, NFLA, Seattle Queer Movie Fest and extra.

He was the co-writer, director and producer of the queer Indigenous internet sequence KIN, which premiered at ImagineNATIVE and was supported via their ImagineNATIVE Originals program.

Seventeen was developed with the help of the 2022 Sundance Institute’s Native Movie Lab, TIFF’s 2022 Filmmaker Lab and the 2024 TIFF Each Story Accelerator.

The function is produced by Your Boy Productions and Experimental Forest Movies, with Ducharme additionally producing alongside Tyler Hagan (The Physique Remembers When The World Broke Open) and Olivia Marie Golosky (pîķîwî) from Experimental Forest Movies.

The director of pictures is Tucker Anderson and Branton Olfert is the composer.

Rounding out the forged are Renae Morriseau (The X-Recordsdata, North of 60), Joel Oulette (Can I Get a Witness, Nancy Drew), Umar Farooq Khan (The Evening Agent), Mathias Retamal (Firefly Lane) and Ray G. Thunderchild (Evening Raiders).

Experimental Forest Movies is an award-winning manufacturing firm dedicated to socially related tales, the credit of which embody TIFF titles By no means Regular, By no means Nonetheless, Seagrass, Till Branches Bend.

Its 2019 manufacturing The Physique Remembers When The World Broke Open gained the Toronto Movie Critics Affiliation Finest Canadian Movie Award (2020) and was picked up for distribution by Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY Releasing. 

Seventeen is being filmed is made doable with the help of Telefilm Canada, Indigenous Display Workplace, CMF, Vortex Media and Bell Media/CRAVE.