Mina Sundwall as Genevieve and Alex Hibbert as Ben in director Hannah Peterson's coming-of-age drama "The Graduates," which takes place a year after a school shooting. Carolina Costa

Restraint and stillness can be hard to pull off in a story where something seismic has happened. But those qualities are central to director Hannah Peterson’s “The Graduates,” a coming-of-age drama that unfolds a year after a fictional school shooting. 

A lesser film might drop viewers into heavy-handed flashbacks of the shooting and its immediate aftermath. But in “The Graduates,” the signs of what happened a year earlier quietly reveal themselves: metal detectors and bag checks at the school entrance. The remains of a memorial to the six teenagers who died. Students, teachers and parents walking on eggshells, not knowing exactly how to mention the unmentionable. 

Peterson, who wrote, directed and edited the film, explained that the choice to only gesture at the shooting is “trusting the audience to be able to do the work to feel the gravity of those things,” she said in an interview. “Maybe it’s like just a moment passing, that you see a student walking through a metal detector. But there’s something lingering about that. There’s something that’s not quite normal about that.”

The film’s carefully wrought focus on what comes next was informed by conversations Peterson had with survivors of school shootings and their parents and teachers, and her intention to tell a different and more nuanced story about gun violence in America. 

“When you think of a survivor of gun violence, we think of it in this really one-note way. We might think of the more explosive emotions that we pay attention to right after something happens,” she said. “Telling the story a year later, after the news cameras had left, was a part of the story that I hadn’t really seen, and I thought it was an opportunity to pay attention to the more subtle, more insidious ways that trauma and grief seep into our lives, and the lasting effects of these things.”

How do you keep on living after an unspeakable tragedy? “The Graduates” chronicles a trio of characters grappling with this question and struggling with survivor’s guilt. There’s high school senior Genevieve (Mina Sundwall), whose boyfriend Tyler died in the shooting; Genevieve and Tyler’s friend Ben (Alex Hibbert), who transferred schools but has now returned to graduate with his classmates; and Tyler’s father John (John Cho), who coaches the school’s basketball team, of which Tyler had been a member. 

“This is the most interesting part of the story: how we go on and how we move forward, and how we still show up as a person, especially coming of age, like in graduating and going out into the world,” Peterson said.

John Cho plays a grieving father and coach of a high school basketball team in "The Graduates." Carolina Costa

When she began developing the film in 2018, Peterson had set out “to tell a contemporary coming-of-age story that took place in the American public school system,” and started interviewing students in Southern California, where she lives. In virtually every conversation, the epidemic of school shootings was top of mind.

“It felt like everybody had this feeling like it might happen to them or someone they know,” she said. “Several students actually had shown me text message threads with their parents that they thought were, like, the last moments of their life. It just felt like there’s no way you can tell a story about high school in America without talking about this.”

Once she started talking specifically with school shooting survivors and their family members, “I was really drawn to the details of the more mundane slice of life, the everyday — like, how is this experience manifesting in your life today?” she said. 

A lot of details from those conversations made their way into the film. “One of the things I really paid attention to was the fact that when you lose somebody, especially suddenly and traumatically, everything is a first, like the first time you take a test without that person, or get in a fight with your mom without that person, or get your license without that person,” Peterson said.

For survivors, there’s also the challenge of making sure the world sees your whole humanity and not just as someone they remember from news headlines. In one scene of the film, Genevieve and her classmates are working on college application essays. Genevieve wonders whether or not to write about the shooting, worrying she’ll become known as the school shooting survivor. 

“That’s something that came from those conversations: the idea of writing college essays and how it would be the obvious thing that you write about — but not wanting to define yourself by this experience,” Peterson said.

Within the film’s exploration of the characters’ quiet grief are also small, quotidian moments of joy and levity. “In the conversations I had, there was a lot of humor. There’s a lot of hope, and there’s a lot of agency, and a lot of that was rooted in this collective sense of grief. And I just thought that was something that we really haven’t shown,” Peterson said. 

Director Hannah Peterson set out to tell a different kind of story about gun violence in America. The Future of Film Is Female

Despite an acclaimed premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival and a team of executive producers that include Cho and Oscar winner Chloé Zhao, the film faced an uphill battle in getting distribution. Peterson expected some of the obstacles, as a first-time feature director with a quiet and character-driven coming-of-age drama with not a lot of big stars. But still, it was discouraging to not land a distributor.

Around that time, Caryn Coleman, the founder of The Future of Film is Female, had been thinking about how the organization could expand its mission into being a film distributor.

Founded in 2018, the New York-based nonprofit supports the work of women and nonbinary filmmakers through grants and film series. 

“I feel like when we talk about the gender equity gap in films, one of the conversations that often gets left out is the films that get into the cinema,” Coleman said. “A lot of times, the focus is on production: ‘How many women have made films?’ Or: ‘Did they get into this festival?’ But how do we make sure that these films get into distributors’ hands? How do we make sure that if they don’t, they get seen, or even if they do get with a big distributor, get the attention that they deserve? And so that’s been something that’s been on my mind for a while.”

She continually noticed the disappointing trend of acclaimed films directed by women struggling to get a distribution deal, pointing out the example of Erica Tremblay’s “Fancy Dance,” starring Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone, which egregiously did not have a distributor for more than a year after its acclaimed Sundance premiere. 

Coleman and Peterson have worked together for years: Peterson received one of the organization’s grants for a short film she made, and Coleman screened “The Graduates” shortly after its Tribeca premiere last year. After that, as Peterson recalled, “She told me: ‘If you’re ever seeking an alternate way of distributing this film, give me a call.’ And after a year of really getting it in front of every distributor, but not finding a home for it, I gave her a call, and I was like, ‘What did you mean by that?’”

What Coleman meant was a more direct distribution model focused on reaching individual audiences and small, independent theaters, coming from her background as a film programmer, as she explained.“So it’s not about, like, being on 70 AMC screens. It’s much more important for us to be in, like, 10 really great independent cinemas around the country,” she said.

To distribute “The Graduates,” Coleman has been reaching out to indie cinemas where she has connections and cold-emailing others. Theater owners have also reached out to her to book the film. It’s an approach tailored both for the film and the individual theaters. For instance, an upcoming screening in Portland, Oregon, will feature a conversation between Peterson and a local high school student who’s active in the anti-gun violence advocacy organization Students Demand Action, which Peterson said was really important for her to have as part of the film’s release. A screening at North Carolina’s a/perture cinema will double as a fundraiser for the theater.

“It’s just really being like: ‘This is up to you. Like, how can we make this work for you in your cinema?’” Coleman said. “Cinemas aren’t exactly, like, a flourishing economy right now. So I’m very mindful about that. I understand that you need to have a screening that makes money for you to continue doing what you do. And so our desire is to make this work for both of us.”

When people ask: What ways can you support? So if you're not a millionaire and can't give us money, come to our screenings. Go to your local independent cinema. Go where you can, and maybe take a chance on a film that you don't know anything about.Caryn Coleman, founder of The Future of Film is Female

For Peterson, this distribution model has taught her the importance of having agency as a filmmaker, and having a direct say in how the film reaches audiences — something she likely wouldn’t have had at a traditional studio.

“In the last year, I was giving so much power to the idea of a distributor — and they do have power, and they have money, they have marketing and all this stuff,” Peterson said. “I think if you do end up getting a larger distributor, oftentimes the filmmaker actually isn’t a big part of those conversations. Oftentimes, little things like the artwork, like the poster, the trailer, these things are out of your hands, and certainly how you theatrically distribute it is out of your hands.” 

But in working directly with Coleman and The Future of Film is Female, Peterson was able to ask for a lot of things that were important to her. She wanted to make sure the film screens at indie cinemas, and had the cast members get media training from the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety so that they could speak thoughtfully about the film and handle its subject matter with care. She especially feels this kind of “more thoughtful distribution” was crucial for a project like “The Graduates,” a subtle and intimate film that deals with sensitive subject matter.

“I’ve learned that you have more power in agency as a creator than you think, and to ask to be in the room for those conversations, because you don’t stop stewarding the film after you make it,” Peterson said. “You are ultimately the person who stewards it out to the world and into an audience, and you shouldn’t be left out of those conversations.”

At the same time, as Peterson and Coleman both underscored, audience members have a lot of power in making sure independent films get seen, like telling your local indie theater to feature a particular film — or simply by showing up.

“I think the most important takeaway is how important your role is as an audience member when it comes to films. It’s literally the reason why movies are made. And so I think, when people ask: What ways can you support? So if you’re not a millionaire and can’t give us money, come to our screenings. Go to your local independent cinema,” Coleman said. “Go where you can, and maybe take a chance on a film that you don’t know anything about. I think that simply going and buying a ticket to see movies is one of the biggest single ways that you can support it.”

Taking what she has learned from this first go-around, Coleman is aiming to distribute one or two new films a year, as much as her small nonprofit can handle. She knows of a handful of other film nonprofits or small for-profit organizations who have also branched out into distribution, and hopes to see more of them replicate this audience-focused distribution model. It may not be enough to support all of the great films and filmmakers out there looking for theatrical distribution — but it can certainly make a dent.

“It’s exciting because I think that there are people who are recognizing that there’s a lot of really great independent films out there. And no one organization can do it all. So my thing has always been like, let’s all get together, and then it’ll, like, raise the tide and maybe shift something,” Coleman said. “It doesn’t just have to come from great studios. You can take a chance on a small film because this organization has their audience behind it.”

To find out if “The Graduates” is coming to a theater near you, visit the film’s website. It will also be available on streaming in 2025.

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