First They Came For My College

***WINNER – Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature – 2026 Florida Film Festival

Patrick Xavier Bresnan examines the accelerating battle over academic freedom in the United States with the right-wing, conservative Republican takeover of New College of Florida, the state’s designated honors college, in Sarasota. Through firsthand accounts from students, professors, administrators, and organizers, the film traces how campuses became flashpoints for culture wars, legislation, donor pressure, and social media outrage. What begins as isolated policy changes and speaker cancellations quietly snowballs into surveillance, self-censorship, and the erosion of shared governance. 

Blending vérité footage, archival news, and intimate interviews, the film captures moments of fear, courage, compromise, and resistance as communities grapple with who gets to teach, learn, and speak. Rather than arguing from a single ideology, First They Came for My College asks viewers to consider what is lost when higher education is governed by intimidation instead of inquiry. Urgent and unsettling, the film warns that the fate of colleges may foreshadow the future of a democratic society nationwide.   

_{2026, 105 Minutes, USA, Directed by Patrick Bresnan, Not Rated}