Filmmaker, writer, dancer and curator, Justin Ducharme unveiled the cast of his new project, Seventeen, as it begins production. The film features prominent Indigenous talent Nizhonniya Austin, Taio Gélinas, Kaniehtiio Horn, Shannon Baker and Aalayna.

Ducharme’s debut feature, set in Vancouver, captures the lives of sex workers and their shared experience of familial and colonial displacement. He commented to Deadline:

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.

A member of the Métis community of St. Ambroise on Treaty 1 Territory, Ducharme participated in the 2022 Sundance Institutes’ Native Lab for his episodic mini-series Positions. His submission was a coming of age story through a queer Indigenous lens.

The cast of Ducharme’s upcoming film have starred in many buzzy projects. Austin in HBO’s The Curse, Gélinas in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Horn in FX’s Reservation Dogs, Baker in Bones of Crows, and Aalayna, a singer, model, and activist who will make her feature debut.

The film is produced by Your Boy Productions, Experimental Forest Films, Ducharme, Tyler Hagan and Olivia Marie Golosky from Experimental Forest Films.