Film Forum

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.

Our run of THE LIBRARIANS is presented in association with Banned Books Week (October 5 – 11, 2025). Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in libraries, bookstores, and schools. The annual event highlights the value of free and open access to information and brings together the entire book community—librarians, educators, authors, publishers, booksellers, and readers of all types—in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas.

Presented with support from The Richard Brick, Geri Ashur, and Sara Bershtel Fund for Social Justice Documentaries

2025     92 MIN.     USA     8 ABOVE

Reviews

CRITIC’S PICK. “GRIPPING... PROFILES IN COURAGE... From its superb opening-credits sequence paying tribute to card catalogs of yore to its sharp selection of vintage clips and intimate reportage, THE LIBRARIANS is as well-crafted as it is profoundly alarming.”
– Sheri Linden, The New York Times
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“A documentary about the hysterical, unfounded, personal, and sometimes violent attacks on librarians. It is also about their unwavering commitment to making facts, literature, and inspiration available to anyone... The film has some indelibly searing moments, linking these efforts to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare, to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels’ burning books by Jewish authors, and to the Twilight Zone episode 'The Obsolete Man,' with Burgess Meredith as a librarian sentenced to death... At a time when elected officials are telling us that January 6 insurrectionists were FBI plants, that acetaminophen causes autism despite extensive documentation to the contrary, and where the President puts an AI fake of himself on social media as though it was an official announcement, this movie reminds us there is just one way to separate truth from propaganda: learning.”
– Nell Minow, RogerEbert.com

“A gripping story of what’s at stake when curiosity and thinking are endangered.”
– Lisa Kennedy, Variety

“A powerful documentary about American book bans — and the heroes who battle them. Kim A. Snyder's film spotlights the librarians on the front line of the culture war waged by right-wingers in certain American states. Scrupulously assembled…”  
– Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter
 
“Chilling… The film surveys several stories of unassuming librarians whose jobs became a vanguard for access…”  
– Adrian Horton, The Guardian