Past Film/Video | Visiting Filmmakers | Classics

Sugar Cane Alley

(Euzhan Palcy, 1983)

Euzhan Palcy in person
Presented by the Wexner Center for the Arts and The Ohio State University Office of Academic Affairs

Info & Tickets

An old woman sewing and a child laying down are in a small room.

Sep 24, 2025 7:00 PM

Film/Video Theater

$15 members
$20 general public
$18 students and adults 55 and over
Free for Ohio State students

Prices include all fees; fees waived for members and in-person purchases.

For ticketing questions please call the Visitor Desk at (614) 292-3535.

A limited number of listening devices are available upon request.

If you have questions about accessibility or require an accommodation to participate in this event, please email accessibility@wexarts.org or call (614) 688-3890. Visit our Accessibility page to learn more.

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Palcy’s first feature as a director is a searing critique of colonialism in her home country of Martinique.

Set in Martinique in the early 1930s, Sugar Cane Alley follows the lives of young Jose (Garry Cadenat) and his grandmother M’Man Tine (Darling Légitimus) as they eke out a daily living by toiling in the harsh conditions of a French-owned sugar cane plantation. Despite their lives of hardship, M’Man and Jose dedicate themselves to his education in hopes it will lead to a happier future for the two of them. Winner of the César Award (the French equivalent of the Oscars) for Best First Feature Film. Based upon Joseph Zobel’s semi-autobiographical novel. A Q&A with Palcy moderated by Katherine Borland, Ohio State professor in the Department of Comparative Studies, follows the screening. In French and Martinican Creole with English subtitles. (103 mins., DCP)

See the entire Euzhan Palcy lineup.

IMAGE CAPTION
Sugar Cane Alley, courtesy of the filmmaker.

"With my camera I don’t shoot, I heal. I try to repair the wounds of history. One film at a time."

Euzhan Palcy

More about the filmmaker

Euzhan Palcy is a Martinican filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer. Her groundbreaking career is comprised of many firsts. She is the first female and first Black director to receive a César Award (the French equivalent of an Academy Award) and a Silver Lion (for Best Director) at the Venice Film Festival, both in recognition of her 1983 film Sugar Cane Alley. She is the first Black woman to have a feature film produced by a Hollywood studio (A Dry White Season, 1989). In 1994 she received a John Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts, and in 2022 she received an Honorary Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In her prolific career in film and television, documentary and narrative, Palcy has continually depicted and examined issues of race and gender and interrogated the history and legacy of colonialism.