Credit: courtesy Patrick Bresnan

New College of Florida for more than 60 years defied the state’s higher education rulebook. In a right-wing-rampant state, it fostered a culture friendly to freedom of gender expression, creative exploration and independent thought. It’s for these reasons the liberal arts college long attracted students in pursuit of rigorous curriculum paired with tight-knit community. 

It’s also for these reasons Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wanted it killed. 

DeSantis in 2023 launched an ultra-conservative overthrow of New College. He stripped its board of trustees and installed hand-picked replacements who shared his fervor for obliterating diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. He pushed rhetoric demonizing the school. He made it a pawn in his “war on woke.”

Board appointee and far right-wing activist Christopher Rufo freely called the transition a “hostile takeover,” while new interim president Richard Corcoran failed to uphold his promise that very little would change. Students were displaced from on-campus housing while financial incentives were dangled to incoming athletes in a move to “rebalance the hormones and the politics on campus.”

Students and faculty revolted in droves, before they started leaving. In less than a year, the school was gutted of all that made it the singular institution it had been for more than half a century. 

Now, new documentary First They Came for My College unravels the school’s political overturn, following the students, educators and alumni who fought to save it. The film made its debut at True/False Film Festival before heading to SXSW, but its homecoming happens this week.

First They Came for My College screens at the Florida Film Festival on Saturday at Enzian Theater with director Patrick Bresnan, students featured in the film and crew present for a Q&A.

The Florida Film Festival returns to the Enzian and Winter Park Regal Cinema for a 25th year starting Friday, with 10 days’ worth of independent films across genre and length (160-plus, all told) on offer. The FFF includes documentaries, feature films, shorts and midnight movies in abundance, along with special screenings featuring Paul Giamatti and Judge Reinhold. And this doc is an especially notable part of the fest programming.

Ahead of the film’s Florida debut, Bresnan tells Orlando Weekly much of the film’s production team was made up of alumni up in arms for their school. Bresnan, not an alum, says the disconnect made his realization of what was happening all the more haunting. 

“When I showed up on campus, a lot of students and parents and alumni were saying, ‘This is fascism.’ I was very cautious about that because it’s a word that brings back memories of the Holocaust and terrible, terrible things,” he says. But his perspective changed drastically when he saw the school decimate its own library collection and student center. 

“A lot of what happened at New College we’re seeing play out now in the world.”

‘First They Came for My College’ director Patrick Bresnan

“The school, while the students were gone, just threw away everything from that space. [They]  took the sign off the wall, threw away the students’ books, threw away a 20-year library of zines and artifacts from that room like it was nothing,” he says. “That’s when it really dawned on me that this is fascism.”

The books thrown away included thousands of titles about women and gender studies, Black history and Indigenous peoples.

“It’s done to confuse people, it’s done to divide people. The way the administration was acting — it was done to make the students feel less safe.”

Credit: courtesy Patrick Bresnan

First They Came for My College closely follows students at the forefront of the fight for their school: the campus newspaper’s editor-in-chief, a student threatened with a felony charge by Rufo, a transfer student who finds community amid the turmoil, a group dedicated to the college’s garden (which ultimately is paved over by the school when talks of a new baseball field surface) and more.

“What was happening at New College was very much like the canary in the coal mine,” he says. “A lot of what happened at New College we’re seeing play out now in the world.”

The film’s title was chosen for that same reason. It alludes to the 1946 poem, “First They Came,” a direct condemnation of complicity in World War II by religious leaders and others in Nazi Germany.  

Bresnan says the title gives the community ownership of the film. It’s documentation of the first time a political siege of its kind has been seen nationwide.

“What I saw at New College is some of the worst behavior I have ever seen by people in power in the U.S.,” Bresnan says. 

By the end of the film, viewers have watched an institution once bustling with artistic expression transformed to a place devoid of its former character. Queer couples are seen being called homophobic slurs by new students, gender studies curriculum have been cut and safe spaces on campus gutted.

The story wraps with one last-ditch effort to resurrect that lost feeling of safety with a student-cast production of Rocky Horror.

Behind the closed doors and in a dimly lit theater, students shout, sing and applaud freely. It comes shortly before a graduation ceremony sees many of the story’s key players — both students and staff — exit the campus for good.

“The New College community has been battered for the last three years. The administration has had an onslaught of undemocratic changes to that college and I think before the film premiered, before we premiered our trailer, people felt defeated,” Bresnan says. “These people had really killed New College.”

But going into the doc’s Florida debut, Bresnan hopes to drive home what he saw during filming: “a New College spirit that you can never kill.”

“Bringing the film to Florida is really like reigniting the resistance to DeSantis, to Corcoran, and to this administration.”

First They Came for My College screens at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, April 11, at Enzian Theater with a cast and crew Q&A. Though that first screening is sold out, the film screens again (sans cast and crew) at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 16, at Regal Winter Park Village.

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This article appears in April 8-14, 2026.

Chloe Greenberg is the Digital Content Editor for Orlando Weekly.