First They Came for My College
As the threat of a conservative curriculum takeover looms over Florida’s New College, a group of students and their professor come together to resist and push back.
Description
Echoing the reality of schools across the country, Sarasota’s New College is caught in the middle of a war on “woke.” With an ambition to “reclaim” the liberal arts institution, Florida governor Ron DeSantis intends to do away with what he perceives as its liberal ideology and replace it with regressive doctrine in alignment with conservative tenets. A group of students band together in resistance, determined to prevent the state from fundamentally changing the school and its mission. With an agitated urgency, Patrick Xavier Bresnan’s essential documentary captures the students as they collaborate with their professors, attend board meetings, question New College’s leadership, and push back against a cultural war that aims to snuff out the very ideas they cherish and emulate. First They Came for My College is both a portrait of conservative overreach and a record of the fearless resistance against it. —Bedatri Choudhury
Biographies
Patrick Bresnan is a visual artist and filmmaker who previously visited The Festival with his feature Pahokee (2019), and his short films The Send-Off (2016) and Rabbit Hunt (2017), both Golden Gate Award winners for Best Documentary Short. Among his other work are features One Big Misunderstanding (2015) and Naked Gardens (2022), and shorts Skip Day (2018), Happiness Is a Journey (2021), and The Passing (2023).
