By In Todd Wiseman Jr.’s debut feature, THE SCHOOL DUEL, gun control is abolished in the state of Florida. School shootings have become endemic. Right-wing influencers target the malleable minds of adolescent boys. And the governor (Oscar Nuñez) has just the solution: a statewide televised fight-to-the-death competition.
A lot of that probably sounds familiar (maybe not the last bit, yet), and it was for Wiseman, too, when he shot the film back in 2024. But since the film’s debut that fall at the Deauville American Film Festival, its dystopia has only grown closer and closer, lending the provocative thriller an alarming salience putting its intrinsic dread on steroids.
Ahead of THE SCHOOL DUEL’s theatrical release in Los Angeles, I sat down with Wiseman to unpack his journey with the film.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Tell me the genesis of the film’s concept. Where did this idea start for you?
Todd Wiseman Jr.: The very genesis was that image during the BLM riots where the couple was standing out in front of their yard with the guns. A long time ago I directed a music video for Dipset, the Brooklyn hip hop group. And I was listening to Dipset and Juelz Santana, riding around the suburbs, and I had the vision of it. I grew up in this type of suburb, and I saw the image of these people in the suburbs with the guns and I just started; that was the germination of the seed of the idea.
You have this heavy gun motif throughout the film. Do you feel that gun control and gun culture are the central thematic engine for the film? What do you view the film as being ultimately about?
TWJ: I come from this [Floridian] world, and I also lived in New York City. And I am someone who owns guns, believe it or not, and I’m a hunter. So the film was an opportunity for me to say something about gun control and how we as a society could do better when our kids are being killed in school. The whole premise is derived from what happens when we take bad policy and just double down, double down, double down, and we don’t try to correct the core issue. It really came from a place of me being upset every time I see this on the news. Why are we just going in the opposite direction? That’s really what it is from a premise standpoint — rather than fix it, we’ll just have the kids shoot each other, right?
The film has such a distinctive look about it. Could you talk about why you wanted this black and white look and then how you went about achieving it?
TWJ: I saw it in black and white. I wanted the violence to be muted. And I wanted it to really be more about the emotion of the characters and have the world feel sort of dated, yet set in the future. So you see little hints of technology beyond where we are today, yet it feels like we’ve gone backwards in terms of social progress. And that’s also reflected in some of the costumes and how the people look and behave.
Kyle Dietz is the cinematographer. He’s truly incredible. I think he’s the next Deakins. I think he’s the guy. He selected the ALEXA Monochrome. There were only, I think, two or four of them in the world, and we had to really beg to get our hands on it. It was baked in, locked in on that camera, so there was no going to color once we shot it.
Florida has such a rich aesthetic and cinematic history. Other than you growing up there, what about Florida spoke to you as where you wanted to set this film?
TWJ: Florida is proud of itself. And I am also kind of a proud Floridian. I think it takes someone from here to be able to portray it, kind of how you would tell a good friend if there was something wrong if they were behaving badly and you love them and you wanted them to course-correct. Florida is also, in many ways, reflective of the nation and our divides. Especially now in this political climate, Florida has a magnifying glass over it. So I thought, what better place to do it? Of course, we also have our own history of this type of gun violence.
Could you expand on the idea of Florida representing our national political divides? I’m interested in what specifically you mean by that.
TWJ: Well, a lot of national politics at this point are set by Floridians — Marco Rubio is in a seat of power. Donald Trump has his winter White House here. Ron DeSantis has influenced national policy. So I think we’re in a political climate that is influenced heavily by Floridians, you know, and I think it’s time to scrutinize that.
You open the film with this manosphere-type clip. Shooting the film in 2024, what was the contemporary reference point at the time and what drew you to open the film that way?
TWJ: Looking at kids and social media, this is something everyone is paying closer attention to. You have these copycat things happening. You have people like the Tate brothers out there telling kids things that are frankly completely absurd and they’re buying it, and they’re isolated. And in their isolation, they’re acting out and doing crazy things. So I wanted to highlight why something like this could happen or where a kid could really be steered in the wrong direction.
The film premiered in Fall 2024, you’ve been doing fests over 2025, and now it’s coming out in 2026. How has your relationship to the film changed throughout this run while a lot of the components of the film, especially this manosphere thread, are coming to pass in the real world?
TWJ: It’s weird. You are a reflection of your environment, and I’ve been living in Florida this entire time, and I’ve received a lot of support from Floridians over the past few years — including from the government of Florida to get my next film off the ground. So I think what’s happened to me over those years is I started to identify with my roots as a Floridian. This is gonna sound crazy because it’s so controversial, but I wanted the film to bring people together around an absurd premise with actually a message of moderation. How can we people who consider themselves gun people or not gun people — and you could consider me a gun person, I own guns — how can we use a film like this to sit back and reflect on a common good, which is safety for our society and for our children?
THE SCHOOL DUEL, an Altered Innocence release, is currently screening in New York and Los Angeles, with an expansion to follow.
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