Graham Streeter shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Hi Graham, thank you so much for joining us today. We’re thrilled to learn more about your journey, values and what you are currently working on. Let’s start with an ice breaker: What are you being called to do now, that you may have been afraid of before?
I am being called to make a feature film about assisted suicide and end-of-life autonomy.
I never imagined I would approach this subject, let alone be compelled to create a film about it. For years, it felt too dark, too heavy, and too final to translate into art. Then a deeply personal experience changed everything. What once filled me with fear suddenly became impossible to ignore.
It did not arrive as an idea or an option, but as a calling. It demanded that I wrestle with it, live inside it, and give it voice through cinema. Making this film has been both cathartic and humbling. Come Monday is not simply another project in my filmography, it is a work born directly out of lived experience. It is not a choice I made, but a responsibility I accepted. In answering it, I’ve grown in ways I never anticipated, not only as a filmmaker, but as a human being.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I am Graham Streeter, filmmaker and founder of Imperative Pictures.
For more than two decades, my work has sought out the fragile, uncomfortable, and profoundly human spaces most people turn away from. Films like Cages, Imperfect Sky, and Unfix each explore where pain and beauty collide, not for shock, but to reveal the truth that lives in silence and shadows.
Come Monday, however, stands apart. It was not conceived from ambition or design but born from necessity. A deeply personal encounter with mortality and compassion left me with questions that could not remain unspoken: What does it mean to end life on one’s own terms? What does it mean to bear witness? To turn away would have been a betrayal. The only honest response was to create.
At Imperative Pictures, we do not chase trends; we follow imperatives. Come Monday embodies that ethos more fully than anything before it. This story did not just inspire me, it claimed me, transformed me, and continues to shape who I am as both an artist and a human being. It is less a film than an act of reckoning, a confrontation with life and death on their most intimate terms.
Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. Who taught you the most about work?
My father taught me the most about work.
He was an artist, a sports illustrator, and I grew up watching him treat art as both craft and discipline. To him, work was never obligation. It was devotion. At his side, I experimented with every medium. He pushed me to paint upside down, to sketch in the dark, to trade color for value , always urging me to see differently, to step into discomfort as a doorway to discovery.
As an illustrator, he lived in the tension of preparation and spontaneity. He studied relentlessly, kept meticulous reference files, yet when the whistle blew and athletes flew across the field, he had only seconds to capture the essence of the moment. Watching him, I learned that artistry doesn’t just live in control , it lives in risk, in the courage to leap with no safety net.
That spirit became the foundation of my filmmaking. Where my father froze truth in a single frame, I learned to stretch it across moving images. But with Come Monday, his lessons took on their fullest weight. This story arrived suddenly, uninvited, and demanded immediacy. Like him, I had to prepare deeply, then surrender completely, meeting a deadline set not by time, but by truth. Come Monday is, in many ways, my father’s teaching made cinematic: be fearless, be ready, and answer when the calling comes.
What did suffering teach you that success never could?
Suffering teaches you to face yourself.
It dismantles the illusions you hide behind and leaves only what is real: fragility, resilience, and humanity. Success may decorate a life, but suffering reshapes it. It strips you bare, demands humility, and awakens empathy. It is the great teacher that forces you to search for meaning where none seems possible.
That truth lies at the core of Come Monday. The film did not emerge from theory or abstraction, but from a lived experience of suffering that fractured me. In its wake, I could not speak of it, much less shape it into art. Yet silence proved impossible. Over time, I realized that the only way forward was to create, to confront what felt unbearable and turn it into a story that might hold meaning for others.
Writing Come Monday has been the most demanding act of my career. It has forced me into a vulnerability that no accolade or achievement could prepare me for. In reliving and reshaping one of life’s darkest chapters, I discovered something unexpected: art is not just expression, it is transformation. Out of suffering came a story, and out of that story, the possibility of healing.
Next, maybe we can discuss some of your foundational philosophies and views? What would your closest friends say really matters to you?
My closest friends would say that what matters most to me is authenticity.
They know I am not drawn to what is safe or fashionable. At Imperative Pictures, every project begins with an imperative, a story that demands to be told, regardless of whether it aligns with convention or expectation.
But Come Monday goes further. It is not simply authentic; it is personal. This story did not arrive as an idea to be shaped, but as a rupture in my own life that required a response. My friends would say that what defines me most is my willingness to answer when a story calls from that place, a call larger than ambition, career, or even art itself.
For them, Come Monday will feel like the truest reflection of me as an artist. It is not an act of entertainment, but of compassion: to step into an unflinching truth and share it with others in the hope that it resonates, challenges, and perhaps comforts. That, above all, is what matters to me.
Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. What do you think people will most misunderstand about your legacy?
The greatest misunderstanding about my legacy would be assuming that I am concerned with legacy at all.
I am not. I have never created films to be remembered. I create because I am compelled, because certain stories refuse to let me go until I give them form. Legacy implies permanence. My work is about presence, about standing fully inside the questions that matter while I am here.
Come Monday is the clearest embodiment of that presence. It did not arise from ambition or design; it emerged from a personal rupture that demanded to be told. It is not merely art, it is lived experience translated into cinema. And it is not about me. It is about what we share: mortality, compassion, the search for meaning.
The path from page to screen will be the hardest I’ve taken, but the recognition this story has already received reminds me that it resonates beyond my own life. That matters more than any idea of glory. For me, the purpose is simple: to give back by offering the lessons suffering taught me, that to die well, one must learn to live well.
The Romans called it amor fati, the love of one’s fate. That is what Come Monday carries at its heart. If others call that legacy, I will not argue. For me, it is simply truth, spoken in the only way I know how.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.imperativepictures.com
- Other: Amazon Prime
Image Credits
Property of Imperative Pictures
