Fantasia 2025 Review: THE SCHOOL DUEL, When Dystopia Doesn't Feel So Distant

The School Duel (Fantasia Film Festival) review - an outstanding feature directorial debut that leaves an indelible mark

Todd Wiseman Jr.’s stunning feature debut, The School Duel, is a provocative, stomach-churning, and urgent dissection of American religious conservatism, popularism, gun love and a host of twisted ideological interpretations of “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”. Few films are as heartbreaking in their vision, compelling in their dissection of the march toward populism, or visceral in the horror they generate a…

Fantasia 2025 Review: THE SCHOOL DUEL, When Dystopia Doesn't Feel So Distant

We are thrown into a twisted, ultra-patriotic Florida where guns, God, and old-school values rule. 13-year-old Sam, a bullied kid who just wants to feel seen, instead he lashes out at his tormentors, even his mom. Sam’s actions catch the attention of Captain Stegmann, a vet and intense handler for “School Duel” — a brutal, state-run competition created to stop school shootings by turning kids into warriors. Sam agrees to join the competition, wi…

"There needs to be change now. Not just another ten years later and some more mass school shootings or school shootings happening": The School Duel Director Todd Wiseman Jr. and Actor Jamad Mays on Their Provocative Thriller at Fantasia 2025 (INTERVIEW)

The School Duel is, simply put, one of the most urgent, necessary, and timely films of the year. Set in a futuristic “Free State of Florida,” the film follows a teenage boy who is chosen to participate in a tournament to the death with other students, designed with the goal of curbing gun violence in schools without implementing gun control. It’s a horrifying film, but in an amazingly provocative way. Timed to the film’s screening at the 2025 Fa…