New Orleans Film Festival 2009

Sex and power games go hand in hand in Welcome To Academia, a dark satire that uses the university as a metaphor for personal and professional relationships. An idealistic graduate student of modern history, on her journey to obtain a well-deserved diploma, learns the hard way that merit and intellect are not the most important values in the corrupt and indifferent environment that she has faith in. The subject of her doctoral thesis, “Aftermath: Yalta, the 20th Century, and Beyond,” symbolizes the power structures of her own reality,- her doctoral committee, known as the Hydra, represents the three World War Two superpowers, the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union. To make matters worse, her charming but oblivious thesis advisor abandons her amidst the swirl of departmental politics. Who’ll be the new Dean? Will the new President ruin the curriculum and get rid of tenure? And what will happen to our young, innocent student of modern history, who has to pay a high price in order to get her well-deserved diploma? Will the 'rite of passage' that she has to go through make her end up like her oppressed oppressors? Starring James LeGros, Callie Thorne, Matt Servitto, Jess Weixler, Laila Robins, Dan Bakkedahl and Robert Hogan