Film students leaping into the competitive struggle to succeed in the national market for feature-length films have to deal with a lot of risks.

But few of them have to deal with looking for weapons of mass destruction.

Jeremy Zerechak, 2006 alumnus, chose to start production on his film before his senior year at Penn State while fighting in Iraq for the National Guard.

His documentary, Land of Confusion, which focuses on the situation in Iraq from the perspective of National Guard soldiers, will make its Pennsylvania debut at the Philadelphia Film Festival on April 13, following its world premiere at the Florida Film Festival early this month. The Philadelphia Film Festival begins Thursday and will end April 15.

As a member of the National Guard while in college, he was activated and deployed to Iraq in early 2004. He decided to film his experiences over the course of his 12-month tour, carrying three cameras in tow.

"It was such an immense opportunity," Zerechak said. "It would have been foolish not to embrace it. I've always been partial to narrative work, but this allowed me to really apply my skills."

Returning to the states, he held off on going through his 56 hours of footage right away. Instead, Zerechak graduated from college, spent a summer working on a film set for Rod Bingaman, senior lecturer in film/video, and then moved to Los Angeles to "test the waters." He went back to his hometown of Pittsburgh in 2007, and, after 10 months of rigorous editing, his feature-length debut was completed.

His platoon's mission was particularly unique. It involved driving and providing security for the Iraq Survey Group, an international team assembled by the Pentagon and CIA and sent on a fact-finding search for the weapons of mass destruction. Zerechak described the film's point of view as "a never-before-seen, behind-the-scenes perspective."

During the clandestine quest for which Zerechak was sworn to secrecy, he worried that he would not be able to show his footage to anyone. At the time, the survey group was gathering reticently generated testimony, later named the Duelfer Report. Once researchers officially conceded to finding no biological or chemical weaponry, Zerechak was relieved that his footage would see the light of day without getting into "all sorts of big trouble."

When interviewing subjects, he opted to steer clear of higher-up officials who had more at stake when divulging information or personal beliefs.

Zerechak joked about hypothetically asking a lieutenant colonel for his opinion on the war, which he said would have been "a very asinine move."

He also said it wasn't much of a challenge to convince the soldiers in his platoon to speak candidly on camera about the war.

"At first, there wasn't much openness, but I had my camera with me so much the soldiers became desensitized and comfortable," Zerechak said. "They expressed discontent with the media coverage of the war and in how the Bush administration was dealing with the war."

But Zerechak emphasizes that Land of Confusion lacks a political agenda and contains a more objective, unbiased tone than other Iraq documentaries of late.

"If you go into a project with the intention of delivering a pre-meditated angle, [the film] becomes a mouthpiece for your own agenda," he said. "An audience always deserves better than that. That's what I wanted to avoid."

In Land of Confusion, "some things appeal to someone with a liberal ideology and some things appeal to someone with a conservative ideology," he said.

Zerechak hopes the audience that views this film will obtain a better understanding of the experiences and disposition of the soldiers in Iraq. Although the documentary was shot about one to two years into the Iraq War, he said, "It's still extremely pertinent and relevant."

Professor Bingaman commented that he thought it was interesting and fresh how Zerechak chose to focus on soldiers as individuals. According to zerechakfilms.com, Bingaman is credited as Land of Confusion's color timer, whose job in the post-production phase is it to correct and match color from scene to scene.

"He asked me and I said, 'I'd be honored to do it,' " Bingaman said. "I had seen the film and it was really strong. It had a really neat message, so it was a win-win situation."

Zerechak is proof that the teacher-student relationship can extend outside of the classroom.

Since graduating, he has maintained regular contact with Bingaman. The professor, who plans to attend the film's screening at the Philadelphia Film Festival, said he truly enjoys working with students, graduates and alumni on various film projects.

"They become members of your extended family, so reuniting with them is a bit of a homecoming," he said.

The film has currently been selected to show at Philadelphia's and Florida's film festivals, as well as the Atlanta Film Festival. However, Zerechak has also had to deal with multiple rejections from other festivals.

"You can't win them all," Zerechak said. "I'm very happy with successes thus far."

If Zerechak's film gets accepted into all the festivals for which he applied from April on, he will be booked until the end of 2008.

As for long-term plans, he intends to stay in Pittsburgh and continue making documentary films, but Zerechak isn't opposed to moving back to Los Angeles at some point.

"It was too difficult being away from my wife the first time," he said. "If it's necessary [to go back], sure. I wouldn't completely rule it out."