Nantucket Film Festival (June 19-24) will feature a short by summer resident Carter Stewart this year. Titled Lyrical, the short film follows a privileged Black law student who is trying to escape pressure from his father and eventually finds himself in a potential poli ce violence situation. The coming of age drama depicts the collision of two worlds: that of the Black elite and the dispossessed. Carter, who serves as the executive vice president over programs at the Mellon Foundation, has a deep-rooted history on the island, where his great-grandparents built a cottage in 1926. He sat down with N Magazine ahead of his film’s debut.

Tell me more about Lyrical.

Lyrical is a very personal story. It’s a story that I started drafting in my head while I was in law school, in part because in my first year, my criminal law professor, rather than giving us a final exam, said, “I’d like you to write an episode of Law & Order that captures all of the legalities and law that we’ve been talking about this semester.” And so that just got me in that mindset of writing a script. I had the opportunity to represent kids who were charged with crimes as part of a juvenile justice clinical in law school, and I also volunteered in a halfway house for kids who were coming out of lockup facilities that were on their way back to their families after a period of months. Those two experiences opened my eyes to a different world. It was really impactful for me, especially to work at the halfway house because these kids shared my ethnicity. We’re African American, but we came from such different backgrounds, and they viewed me with suspicion … looked at me as an Uncle Tom. I was struck by the fact that they have these incredible stories that I wasn’t aware of, and so that combination plus the script idea got me writing.

When did you start this project?

I wrote the first draft all the way back in 2003. We just had our daughter, and I was going through my background check  when I was about to start as a federal prosecutor, so I had about two months dedicate the film to my dad, who’s buried in the Colored cemetery.

What kind of impact do you hope that this film makes not only on the island, but beyond?

I hope it encourages people to think about our shared humanity. That’s the basic point. From my time as a prosecutor, and then when I was a defense attorney as well, and also during the juvenile justice time that I had at law school, what became evident to me is that we allow injustices to happen in large part when we don’t see the humanity of the folks that they are happening to. And when we think “those people are different, they’re not like us,” that sense of separation leads to bad things happening. And so I’m hoping that people, after seeing this, will think about how everybody has a story. Everybody has reasons and development history that help explain why they are who they are and how they act. And that if we take the time to learn each other’s stories, this will be a better world. I want people to feel entertained. I want folks to feel engaged. I think anybody who has felt caught in between worlds will see themselves in this film. Folks who feel like they don’t really belong to one place or another, I’m hoping that they see themselves and realize that they’re not alone in feeling that way.

All of your career and life experiences have allowed you to look deeper at humanity, so how did that continue to inspire the depth of this script’s story?

Well, the sad fact is that this film feels just as relevant today as it did back in 2003, which to me shows that we have not had as much progress as I would have hoped in this development of the criminal justice system. The fact that it’s still relevant today is unfortunate and sad to me. How the movie changed over the time was really personal. It changed as my relationship with my dad developed and changed as I got older. He passed away four, five years ago. But standing in the shoes of a father helped me understand him better and helped me understand where he was coming from when he showed me what I would call tough luck, when he would basically try to tell me what I should do with my life and force me into certain situations that I didn’t really want to go in. … So I think that the time difference between then and now really allowed me to learn from and lean into my relationship with my dad, which is why I dedicated the film to him. His influence is a key factor. As much as I recognize that there was some detriment to the things he was pushing me to do, there was also a huge upside in terms of his teaching me about the power of persistence and the power of time on task. It was that lesson that led me to keep working on this [film].

After watching the film, what are some steps that we can begin to put in place as a community to help shift the narrative into a better light?

I would encourage people to do what I did, which is to volunteer, to reach across places where you don’t necessarily feel comfortable, and try to learn that which you don’t know. And so if you have the opportunity to volunteer, to work with, to support, to basically be proximate to some of these issues that are so easy to ignore, that would be for everyone’s betterment. And this actually comes from Bryan Stevenson’s book, Just Mercy, where he talks about how important it is for us to not stay too comfortable in our established worlds, but to learn how others live. So public service and volunteering would be my number one piece of advice.