CR 087: Kim A. Snyder Explores the Chilling Effects of Book Bans in ‘The Librarians’

The Oscar-nominated documentarian discusses her latest award-winning film.

Kim A. Snyder, photo by Erik Tanner

For more than two decades, Kim A. Snyder has directed and produced more than a dozen films on critical social justice issues, including gun violence, homelessness, and immigration, earning a Peabody Award and an Academy Award nomination. Her latest film, The Librarians, delves into the heated debate over book bans, as it follows a group of school librarians in Florida, New Jersey, Louisiana, and Texas who face job loss and death threats for the simple act of doing the work they were hired to do.

“I saw this news that broke back in the fall of 2021,” Snyder says. “State Representative Matt Krause in Texas issued a list of 850 books that became known as the Krause List for school librarians to review and remove from their shelves. This list was in some ways surprising and random to many librarians, but very much targeting, almost exclusively, books about and by LGBTQ+ authors, authors of color, books about race, history, Black history, and sex education…