director of the film “Sugarcane”
Emily Kassie is an Emmy and Peabody nominated filmmaker and investigative journalist. Her feature documentary Sugarcane, directed alongside Julian Brave NoiseCat, follows a search for unmarked graves at a former Indian residential school. SUGARCANE, which Kassie also served as a producer and cinematographer, premiered in competition at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Directing Award for Documentary. Previously, Kassie directed on Netflix's EXPLAINED series featuring Ethan Hawke and Julianne Moore. She has made numerous films and commissions for The New York Times, PBS Frontline, and The Guardian, among others. Her first documentary I MARRIED MY FAMILY'S KILLER, on intermarriage in post-genocide Rwanda, won the Student Academy Award in 2015.
She also has worked extensively as a journalist covering geopolitical conflict, humanitarian crises, corruption, and the stories of people caught in the crossfire. Her work has followed the Taliban’s crackdown on women, climate injustice in Nigeria, the exploitation of the refugee crisis, America’s immigrant detention system, drug and weapons trafficking in the Saharan desert, child labor in Turkey, and more. In 2021, she smuggled into Taliban territory with PBS Newshour correspondent Jane Ferguson to report on their imminent siege of Kabul. Her work on sexual abuse in immigrant detention was used in the senate judiciary hearings on child separation at the US border. Her work has been honored with multiple Edward R. Murrow, Overseas Press Club, World Press Photo, National Press Photographers awards and National Magazine Awards. In 2019 she was named multimedia journalist of the year by POYi and won the Peabody Future of Media award. In 2020 she was named Forbes 30 under 30 in media. She is a 2023 New America Fellow and Sundance Catalyst Felloow.
