THE LIBRARIANS Q&A with Filmmaker Kim A. Snyder

The Librarians: Book banning is as old as public libraries, but the battlegrounds are freshly polarized and the stakes as high as ever, as witnessed by Oscar®-nominated Kim A. Snyder in her paean to librarians, and the parents and students who flank them, on the frontlines. In Louisiana, an award-winning librarian, heartbroken by the loss of alienated teens in her midst to suicide, defends books featuring queer lives and accurate historical accounts of slavery, while withstanding death threats from her own parish community. In Texas, a zealous parent seeks to criminalize librarians for keeping LGBTQ material on shelves, while her estranged son (who is gay) testifies against her at a school board meeting. In New Jersey, a librarian exposes the dark-money-connected Moms for Liberty as a major book-banning engine; while in Florida, an African American pastor and a public school librarian (a minister’s wife and daughter) join forces to defend libraries as places of historical truth and intellectual freedom.

Kim A. Snyder is an Academy Award® nominee and Peabody Award-winning Director / Producer whose latest feature, THE LIBRARIANS, premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Her Oscar®-nominated short Death By Numbers, co-created with gun-violence survivor Sam Fuentes, has won multiple awards. Snyder’s acclaimed films include US KIDS (Sundance 2020), Lessons From A School Shooting (Netflix Original), and NEWTOWN (Sundance 2016, Peabody Award, PBS). Her earlier work includes WELCOME TO SHELBYVILLE (PBS) and I REMEMBER ME (Zeitgeist Films). She also associate produced the Oscar®-winning short Trevor, which spawned The Trevor Project. Snyder holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins SAIS and lives in New York City.

Learn more and buy tickets.