A Conversation with Hannah Peterson (THE GRADUATES)
A year after captivating critics and audiences at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival (where it won Best Cinematography), writer-director Hannah Peterson’s poignant, yet warm feature debut The Graduates will finally open in theaters on November 1 beginning at NYC’s Metrograph. The film looks at lives beyond the news cameras as it follows survivors of a school shooting trying to move forward one year later. It features powerful performances from stars Mina Sundwall (Lost In Space), Alex Hibbert (Moonlight), and John Cho (Columbus) as survivors trying to cope with their trauma over a shared loss. With her nuanced storytelling and her sensitive approach to a topic that’s sadly too common, Peterson, who was mentored by Sean Baker and Chloé Zhao, establishes herself as a riveting new voice in American independent cinema. It was a pleasure to speak with her about the making of the film and what drives her as a storyteller.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Hammer To Nail: Thank you so much for taking the time to chat! Not to make this conversation political, but I think this film is a necessary watch as we head into the election as it shows how lives are altered by this tragedy that is sadly too common in this country. How does it feel for you to have the film finally released at this pivotal time?
Hannah Peterson: I think along the way, people tell you “Oh, it will find its home when it’s meant to.” It’s hard to believe when you’re drudging along making a film and trying to find its audience, but I feel it’s coming out at a time when it can actually be a catalyst for a conversation. That’s something that was my original intention while making this film, and it couldn’t be coming out at a better time honestly. I’m really glad that it’s coming out in theaters and I hope people have a safe space to process their feelings around gun violence that’s outside of the reactive media cycle after watching this film. I don’t take the responsibility lightly and I’m happy it’s coming out right now.
HTN: You’ll be premiering it at Metrograph of all places, which is pretty prestigious here in NYC! Are you excited about that?
HP: I’m terribly excited! If you asked me what my dream theater was to show a movie, it’d be Metrograph. I’ll never forget seeing Zia Anger doing a live performance of My First Film at Metrograph. I got to sit there and watch it, and afterward there was this incredible energy and conversation around the film with the people I had just watched it with. I remember feeling the electricity in the room and that really left a mark on me at Metrograph. I’m so excited to show the film there. I think it’s the right audience for us.
HtN: Who knows? Maybe you’ll leave your mark on somebody sitting there in the audience.
HP: I’d love that!
HtN: I am curious about your screenwriting process. I know you put a lot of research into it which involved conversations with students and grief counselors. How did that process work for this film?
A still from THE GRADUATES
HP: I feel like I was writing it for a long time, and I was also writing it while I was directing. In a way, I was also still writing it in the editing room. I feel like it’s something that I made adjustments to along the way. I started writing the film the way I do everything that I do, and that’s through conversations with people. I’m trying to understand a lived experience of these characters and find my way in. I always feel that screenwriting, for me, is like being in a dark room and finding the light switch. To me, that’s what those initial conversations are. I was writing it back in 2018 when there was a lot of media coverage around school shootings. It was the first time there was a lot of media coverage and interviews with survivors of gun violence, and I think that’s something that impacted me a lot while I was writing it. Along the way, as I was writing it and getting ready to make it, once I cast the actors – especially since they’re around the same ages as the characters – I really took their thoughts into consideration with the script as well. So it’s something that was never moving target and something that was really malleable all the way through.
HtN: I was thinking the same thing about the actors as well because they’re really young and some of them are probably still in school. I’m sure that a lot of themes that occur in the film must’ve resonated with them on different levels, especially depending on where some of them come from, what states they live in, etc.
HP: Yeah absolutely. Alex Hibbert lives in Florida. Mina Sundwall had a roommate who was a school shooting survivor. Everybody has a touchpoint to this film in some way. That’s part of why it was important for me to cast actors close to the characters’ age. A lot of times, you’d see much older actors playing high schoolers. Many of the background students and some of the teachers in the film are actual administrators, teachers, and students who were part of the public school system that we were filming in. We were trying to tie this tapestry together of people’s present experiences, especially because I wrote it in 2018 but we didn’t film until filming in 2021. So much had changed by then. I’m always trying to absorb and take in how people are feeling in regards to script and reflecting that back into the screenwriting process.
HtN: I was curious because, in the film, you see banners hung up that read “Class of 2019” even though you started filming in 2021. What was the reasoning behind this time setting?
HP: The reason it was set in 2019 was because I think it was a really poignant time in terms of the subject. That was a time when we were seeing more and more instances of gun violence in schools and not all events had the same media coverage. I think I was interested in focusing on a school that didn’t get a whole lot of media coverage and its students had to return to school rather quickly. I really wanted to explore how these students cope when the new cameras have left and the reverberations of violence just continue on. Like we’re meant to just go back to normal, go to classes, graduate high school, and all this stuff. I think if we look back to 2018/2019, I think that’s when there was an overwhelming amount of coverage around school shootings. Setting the film in a school that has little coverage was important to me.
HtN: I’d love to hear about your casting process because everyone plays their parts wonderfully. How did you especially come across Mina and Alex?
HP: We had an amazing casting director, Paul Schnee. We did a national casting call that was non-approachable, which was great because we got people from all across the country. Mina is someone who kept coming back to my mind as I was sifting through my mind about who would be right for this role. Mina’s understanding of the character, the story, and the weight and responsibility of telling this story really struck me. It was the same with Alex. He was in Moonlight when he was a child and now at the time we were filming, he was 17 or 18, pretty much like the ages of the characters. He had this really childlike innocence, and he still looks like a child. I think that part of how it reflects on the character was really important. When I saw the two at the chemistry read, it was just undeniable that they had to play these characters.
HtN: The characters of Gen and Ben are each struggling with their own trauma, especially with their shared loss. What was it like working with Mina and Alex to carry those emotional arcs that helped anchor the film?
HP: I always knew that I wanted each of the characters to have different grief journeys. They’re all in different timelines in how they’re grieving their person and how they’re beginning to move forward. It purposefully doesn’t happen at the same time. When it does happen, it’s these really subtle movements in their life, and oftentimes in this story, it comes from their connection with one another. When I was casting, it was important to find people who really wanted to put in the work to develop their characters. Mina and Alex were certainly those people. They work in very different ways. Me and Mina had a million different conversations and we were always talking about the character and her backstory. She had questions I was so excited to answer, as did I for her that she was excited to answer. Alex is someone who’s more internal as an actor. I think for him, he needed to figure it out on his own and not necessarily talk about it. I think that really reflected in their performances in a really cool way. These characters are grieving this same person in very different ways, and I think the fact they each took it in their own way as actors really helped.
HtN: I do want to talk about John Cho a bit. His character is going through this tremendous, unimaginable loss. But at the same time, he doesn’t allow himself to be lost. He hangs onto his kindness and tries to be a supportive and encouraging leader for the students around him. How was it with John to navigate this character’s journey together?
HP: It was such a dream to work with John because he’s just so seasoned. He is a father in real life, and I think he connected to the character in a really specific way. So much of his performance was the magic of the really brilliant choices that he made at the moment. We had this conversation about this character holding it together for everybody else until he could not anymore. I think that’s something he really took to heart. This moment when we were filming comes to mind when at the beginning of the film, he walks down the hallway, approaches his son’s locker, and touches it as he walks by.
HtN: I remember that part.
HP: It’s meant to show that this is something he does regularly when he leaves the office after a day at work. I think it’s a moment that an actor can take a more dramatic turn with, but he made this really subtle choice to touch that locker so casually and I think that’s a good example of his approach to the character. He was never overworking the drama of this character, and I think that helps make it feel like we’re living a day in this real person’s life. He’s a brilliant actor.
HtN: With the cinematography, I loved the naturalistic approach to lighting as well as the tight compositions on the actors’ faces. How did you work with your DP Carolina Costa to create the visual aesthetic?
HP: She’s the best collaborator. She had a level of understanding of the film in a way I learned about the story itself, just by talking to her and her interpretation of it. We always talked about the space being a character. We were trying to figure out how to suffuse the image of these invisible elements of a history we are just not seeing. The first choice I made in making this film was that we are not going to see the act of violence itself. Me and Carolina had this really honest conversation on how we show that this is a force acting on the present, and at the same time emphasize the limits of what can be seen and known in the story. Sometimes it was like a trembling to the camera. I feel like that, plus the idea of using natural light as much as possible were things we needed to make it feel as present as possible with the characters.
HtN: There’s the line that’s quickly spoken in the photography class scene: “Without memory, life is meaningless.” Even though it was spoken swiftly without much dramatic emphasis, hearing that alone speaks volumes concerning the story. When you wrote that line, did you intend for it to resonate that way?
HP: Yeah, it’s a really intentional quote put in there. I think that quote speaks to the content of the story and the idea of the film generally as well. It really synthesized a lot of what I was trying to get across in the story in just a few lines. So it was very intentional, especially in putting it out there without – like you said – much emphasis on it. But the idea is that maybe it will sink into the back of Mina’s character’s head and simmer in it for a while.
HtN: One scene that stood out to me was when Gen gets her college acceptance letter, the first person she goes to tell when her mom’s not around isn’t Ben or her friends, but John – the father of her late boyfriend. It was a truly sweet and heartfelt moment of connection with the two. What led you to write this moment between them?
HP: I love that scene so much. There are a million reasons why she wouldn’t bring it to John. I think she knows the weight that it carries that she’s gonna go to college and her late boyfriend – his son – isn’t going to. But at the same time, this moment when she’s choosing to celebrate this moving forward into trust shows that he can hold space for that too. I think that moment of connection was really important to me because, in the story, that’s the catalyst for both of them beginning to take a step forward in their own lives. Where that scene comes from is just trying to hold the complexity of all these things both of them are going through, like holding onto the memory and wanting to live and move forward. Both of those things can be held in the same hand. To me, that’s the story of grief.
HtN: The sound design is very intricate. The film feels very quiet and subtle at times, but it feels very geared toward the theatrical experience. Can you talk about that process and how it plays into the storytelling?
HP: Kent Sparling, my sound designer, will be very happy you noticed that. He and I had a lot of conversations about bringing character into the silence of the film. I think it goes back to the idea of how you evoke history in a space. So much of that is done through sound design. When we’re walking through these quiet hallways, that silence is something that can have a lot of textures, layers, memories, and evocation of history. He did so much work to actually get field recordings inside of schools and play with them in a way that they were just voices in the silence. I think he did that in such a subtle and masterful way. That was really our guiding point for a lot of the sound design.
HtN: As you go forward as a director, do you hope to tell more stories that shine a light on life up close and personal away from the news cameras, as you said?
HP: Yes. This is what I care the most about. This is what I respond to most as an audience member. Unless you can really believe the characters on screen, nothing else really matters. From my experience as a filmmaker and the types of films I’ve watched and got to work on, being able to bring in a texture of reality is something that I think is electric and makes a real sense of presence in the work. It makes something an experience to watch and that’s something I’m really passionate about. I will continue to work on that, hopefully for the rest of my life.
– M.J. O’Toole (@mj_otoole93)
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