2026 Nellie Wong Magic of Movies Essay Contest Winners
High School: 2nd Runner-Up – Liam Knudsen, Berkeley High School
My family has a running joke that my father talks about only one of two things at the dinner table: Jesus or Nazis. We often grumble about his tendency to catastrophize– my father will not get his picture taken at TSA because he believes it volunteers his autonomy to a future surveillance state– and while our jokes are hyperbole, in my dad’s mind, everything can be traced back to either religion or oppression. In many cases, it’s both, and the documentary “First They Came For My College” proves that perhaps we should all spend more time listening to people like my father.
In 1933, the Nazis burned 25,000 books they deemed un-German. In 2024, the New College of Florida filled dumpsters with hundreds of books from the Gender and Diversity Center, shortly after dismantling the center, which had stood for nearly 30 years. Why? A hatred of everything “woke”, an ideology so dogmatic it emulates my father’s second-favorite dinner conversation: religion. Everyone likes to believe they wouldn’t buy into Mussolini’s propaganda, that the millions who supported South African apartheid were simply morally corrupt. But it is not so simple. Ideologies are built on the faith of a few, and excused by the majority who ignore their presence. While watching, I found myself examining my own complicity. What am I doing to fight back?
While studying film, I’ve taken a special interest in how film is used as a tool for resistance. What I found most beautiful about this documentary was its portrayal of what resistance actually looks like. It reminds us that resistance does not have to mean protesting in the streets, risking your body; it is not always so violent. Sometimes, resistance is simply showing that you will not break. It’s rebuilding the community garden after a hurricane, despite your college’s best efforts to destroy it. It’s continuing to put on the Rocky Horror Picture Show each year and creating a safe space for queer people, despite your government refusing to admit that they exist. It is acceptance, kindness, and the courage to step back and say, “I was wrong.” Martin Neimöller, the German pastor whose famous anti-Nazi poem is the title’s inspiration, originally supported Hitler. It’s a detail not lost on the filmmakers. Josh’s character development and the open-hearted acceptance by the New College community represent something rare– a disengagement from ideology and an unconditional commitment to others.
It’s difficult to interrogate your place in the world’s injustices. It’s difficult to remember that tomorrow’s histories– the South Africas, the Nazi Germanies– are written now. And it’s difficult to fight back, especially when you don’t know where to start. I am no exception. I open the news and am crushed by the stories of drone strikes and poverty rates. Somebody should fix these things, I say, but not me, and not today. What do I do instead? I tease my dad for being paranoid. The alarm bells are sounding. The film asks us: Will we choose to listen?