SEVENTEEN – Indigenous Sex Worker Drama Begins Production

Justin Ducharne’s debut feature Seventeen has begun production in Vancouver.

Set over the course of seventeen hours, the film follows three Indigenous sex workers. Their 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. He was the co-writer, director and producer of the queer Indigenous web series KIN. The series premiered at ImagineNATIVE and was supported through their ImagineNATIVE Originals program.

Ducharne had this to say about the project:

“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.

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.” 

Unceded Coast Salish Territories refers to territories inhabited by the indigenous Coast Salish peoples for thousands of years. The British Crown claimed the land in the late 18th and early 19th centurywithout their permission. This includes land on which Vancouver is now resides.

Cast lineup

Seventeen stars Nizhonniya Austin (The Curse), Taio Gelinas (Beans), Kaniehtiio Horn (Seeds), Shannon Baker (Bones of Crows) and newcomer, singer, model, and human rights advocate Aalayna.

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 director of photography is Tucker Anderson and Branton Olfert is the composer.

Your Boy Productions and Experiemental Forest Films produces the feature. Ducharme produces alongside Tyler Hagan and Olivia Marie Golosky (pîķîwî) from Experimental Forest Films.

SOURCE: Deadline.com