SEVENTEEN
JUSTIN DUCHARME | CANADA | 2026 | 88 MIN | ENGLISH
JUSTIN DUCHARME | CANADA | 2026 | 88 MIN | ENGLISH
Synopsis
The lives of three sex workers become intertwined in the crowded corners of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside—and even more so with the workers in question being young, queer, and indigenous. Housing, citizenship, and family are just a few pressing issues weighing on the trio’s minds, sparking heartfelt conversations and crucial decisions. Tamara has lost her passport and needs to find it for a safe return to the US, while Aiden needs to find enough money to put down a deposit on an apartment. December is holding everything and everyone together, but in doing so, she hopes to avoid a daunting phone call back home to her family on the reserve. Not the issues of your average seventeen year old, same with grieving the death of your father, or resenting your dependence on your sugar daddy (who happens to be hooked on cocaine). Nonetheless, hope and resilience find their places in these young people’s lives, in moments of connection—seeing each other, being seen and supported, helping each push through their hectic day to the possibility of a brighter future.
Trailer
Filmmaker Bio
Justin Ducharme is a writer and filmmaker from the Métis community of St. Ambroise on Treaty 1 Territory. His short films POSITIONS and THE DANCER have screened at festivals including ImagineNATIVE, Asinabka, BFI Flare, NFLA and Seattle Queer Film Fest. He is an alumnus of the 2022 Sundance Institute’s Native Film Lab, TIFF’s 2022 Filmmaker Lab and the 2024 TIFF Every Story Accelerator with his debut feature film project SEVENTEEN. Justin is co-editor of Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers Poetry. His writing has appeared in Canadian Art, Room Magazine, Prism International and The Positive Side.
Director's Statement
Seventeen is a quiet and sentimental narrative about the power of chosen family relations and the importance they carry to the contemporary urban queer Indigenous experience. […] In this final product, I attempt to blend an almost documentary-like framing with snippets of intimate conversation and connection to portray the urban Indigenous sex worker as one with complexities, flaws, ambition and most importantly with chosen family and community at the centre of it. […] Tenderness is something that I feel has been rarely afforded to communities like ours and this film ultimately became what feels like an ode to that withheld tenderness.
Producer
Justin Ducharme, Tyler Hagan, Olivia Marie Golosky
Writer
Justin Ducharme
Cast
- Aalayna
- Nizhonniya Austin
- Taio Gelinas
- Shannon Baker
- Kaniehtiio Horn
- Renae Morriseau
PARTNERS
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