EXCLUSIVE: Justin Ducharme has begun production on debut feature Seventeen, revolving around the lives of three Indigenous sex workers in Vancouver.
The production has also unveiled its buzzy Indigenous cast featuring Nizhonniya Austin (The Curse), Taio Gelinas (Avatar: The Last Airbender, Beans), Kaniehtiio Horn (Seeds, Alice Darling, Reservation Dogs), Shannon Baker (Bones of Crows) and newcomer, singer, model, and human rights advocate Aalayna.
Set over the course of seventeen hours, the film follows three Indigenous sex workers whose lives intersect through chance, relation and the shared experience of familial and colonial displacement.
Writer, filmmaker and curator Ducharme, who hails from the Métis community of St. Ambroise on Treaty 1 Territory, has tapped into his own experiences for the screenplay.
“I’m very excited to be off the ground and working on Seventeen with such an amazing cast and crew. This project has been long in development with the support and inclusion of my community of Urban Indigenous kin and sex workers located here on these Unceded Coast Salish Territories,” said Ducharme.
The director is referring to territories inhabited by the indigenous Coast Salish peoples for thousands of years and claimed by the British Crown in the late 18th Century and early 19th Century without their permission, which includes land on which Vancouver is now built.
“Being an experiential sex worker myself, my storytelling has aimed to capture the power that occurs within the intersections of Indigenous sexual sovereignty and chosen family relations, Seventeen is an extension of these thoughts and I can’t wait to share it with audiences.”
Ducharme previously made waves with short films Positions and The Dancer, which screened at festivals such as ImagineNATIVE, Asinabka, BFI Flare, Outfest Fusion, NFLA, Seattle Queer Film Fest and more.
He was the co-writer, director and producer of the queer Indigenous web series KIN, which premiered at ImagineNATIVE and was supported through their ImagineNATIVE Originals program.
Seventeen was developed with the support of the 2022 Sundance Institute’s Native Film Lab, TIFF’s 2022 Filmmaker Lab and the 2024 TIFF Every Story Accelerator.
The feature is produced by Your Boy Productions and Experimental Forest Films, with Ducharme also producing alongside Tyler Hagan (The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open) and Olivia Marie Golosky (pîķîwî) from Experimental Forest Films.
The director of photography is Tucker Anderson and Branton Olfert is the composer.
Rounding out the cast are Renae Morriseau (The X-Files, North of 60), Joel Oulette (Can I Get a Witness, Nancy Drew), Umar Farooq Khan (The Night Agent), Mathias Retamal (Firefly Lane) and Ray G. Thunderchild (Night Raiders).
Experimental Forest Films is an award-winning production company committed to socially relevant stories, the credits of which include TIFF titles Never Steady, Never Still, Seagrass, Until Branches Bend.
Its 2019 production The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open won the Toronto Film Critics Association Best Canadian Film Award (2020) and was picked up for distribution by Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY Releasing.
Seventeen is being filmed is made possible with the support of Telefilm Canada, Indigenous Screen Office, CMF, Vortex Media and Bell Media/CRAVE.
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