Jessie Anthony's Brother, I Cry continues to make an impact at Vancouver Women in Film Festival
Drawing from personal experience, the breakout Indigenous filmmaker looks at the devastation of drug addiction
A still from the addiction story Brother, I Cry.
Jessie Anthony
The Vancouver International Women in Film Festival streams Brother, I Cry and El Color Negro from March 4 to 14, via VIFF Connect. The film is followed by a pre-recorded artist talk with director Jessie Anthony, moderated by Katrina Mugume
VANCOUVER’S JESSIE ANTHONY has had an incredible ride over the past couple years, writing and directing her first feature, Brother, I Cry, right out of film school at CapU. She won Best BC Emerging Filmmaker at October’s VIFF, and the Audience Choice Award at ImagineNATIVE; now her movie is nominated for three awards at the Vancouver Film Critics’ Circle awards on March 8. Later this month, Brother, I Cry plays at Australia’s Birrarangga Festival, which opens with the hit short film El Color Negro that she produced last summer.
But the bubbly yet refreshingly honest artist stays grounded, careful to remember where she comes from and the painful family story that inspired Brother, I Cry.
“It’s been overwhelmingly beautiful—sometimes unreal, if that makes sense,” she says of the past year, speaking to Stir before the drama streams at the Vancouver International Women and Film Festival that kicks off March 4. “It’s a feeling of accomplishment and pride, yet also all these other feelings that come with it.
“I was a little Rez girl growing up on the reserve and I knew I wanted to tell stories, but I didn’t know what that would look like,” continues Anthony, who hails from the Onondaga Nation, Beaver clan, on the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory in Ontario. Choking up, she adds: “It shows you can put your mind to do anything and you can do it, even growing up in a place where there aren’t a lot of opportunities.”
Amid the joy, grief and distress are also emotions inextricably linked with Brother, I Cry. The film is a raw portrait of young, Indigenous father-to-be Jon (Justin Rain), who struggles to stay out of jail and away from drugs, and the strong women in his life—his sister, mother, and pregnant girlfriend—who try to support him.
The story is rooted in real life, inspired by Anthony’s own brother’s addiction and the loss of her cousin to an overdose.
“I made this movie to show my fears—that I’m scared for my brother, and people I love and my community,” Anthony says. “Far too often we don’t talk about these things because of the guilt that comes from it. But watching my life in front of me [on film] has been a bit triggering.”
The script was sparked by a real dream that Anthony had of her brother overdosing and trying to find his body. It plays out in a chilling sequence in the film—one, like Anthony’s own nightmare, that carries a higher meaning and connection between brother and sister.
“You’ll see elements in the film of the spirit world,” says Anthony, who also does spiritual medium work. “In the Indigenous world, the spirit world isn’t over there and we’re over here. I knew it was my brother’s spirit, his soul speaking to me; he didn’t know where he was and I went looking for him.
“I just love him so much and our role as siblings means something.”
Around the same time as she was focused on her brother’s survival and writing the first drafts for Brother, I Cry, Anthony lost her cousin to a fentanyl overdose in 2017.
“I wanted to let people know they’re not alone in this thing,” Anthony stresses, adding her inboxes have been filling with stories from people telling her they felt heard in her film.
The film is full of details that show a different side to addiction recovery—the realities of methadone treatment, the attempts to keep a job, the pressure from buddies who still use.
“I wanted a functioning addict, to show that he’s trying to work,” says Anthony.
Rain hands in a fearless, indelible performance as Jon, showing how even the most likable, charismatic guy can relapse and internalize the disappointment people feel in him. In one scene, Jon describes taking his first Oxy at 13 in the script’s real, searingly direct vernacular: “I didn’t have a care in the fuckin’ world,” he says. “The hate I had for myself was fuckin’ gone.”
But the female performances—from Lauren Hill as strong-willed sister Ava, Violet Cameron as his pregnant partner Leah, and Odessa Shuquaya as his mother—are just as key. Not one-note supporters, they fall into enabling Jon as well. Here, too, Anthony also drew from her own experience.
“In my life my brother was surrounded by women—me, my mom, my aunties. My culture is matriarchal and matrilineal,” Anthony says. “There are the females that care about him but don't know how to get to him, or how to fix what's going on with themselves to help him. I needed to showcase the pillars that held him up, but also trapped him.”
While Brother, I Cry suggests the causes for Jon’s struggles, rarely does it spell them out—let alone sugarcoat his battles.
Watch for symbols throughout and pay attention to the impressive camerawork’s visual cues.
“I wanted the camera to be the intergenerational trauma—just sitting in the corner watching it,” hints Anthony, whose own mother survived residential school. “Everyone knows it's there but can’t do anything about it. I wanted it to feel institutional.”
It’s an approach that feels surprisingly assured for a such a young director. But she says screenwriting and filmmaking have come naturally to her.
Anthony was always drawn to the arts and storytelling. She describes growing up in a strong, loving family surrounded by music. She later trained in a youth drama group at Six Nations, and went on to study acting at college in Ontario. But she was back on the reserve “working at a smoke shop”, when a friend invited her to Vancouver—a trip that would lead to the studies at CapU’s Indigenous filmmaking programming, where she thrived. The support of Telefilm’s Talent to Watch program helped boost her ability to bring her first film to fruition.
Proving that effort wasn’t a one-off, the striking, poetic El Color Negro has been welcomed with equal praise. Directed and shot by Andy Hodgson (cinematographer for Brother, I Cry), the short mixes spoken-word narration with stunning black-and-white portraiture in a meditation on the colour black—and being Black.
“It was the first time in Vancouver history that there were 21 Black people on a set for a shoot,” Anthony marvels.
With a new web series in the works (Querencia, about two Indigenous, queer women), Anthony is already moving diversity in film forward. She’s also part of a strong new wave of Indigenous women filmmakers earning attention right now, including Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, whose The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open gathered awards in 2019.
Anthony is characteristically optimistic—but also characteristically realistic—about the industry opening up to BIPOC voices.
“I think there is a shift happening,” she says, then adds, “but I find it kind of interesting that it is just happening now. I really hope that broadcasters and distributors really see that and continue making room for our voices—because there’s room for everybody.”
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