A post-screening panel with Snyder (­second from left) and retired school ­librarian Martha Hickson (fist in the air). Photos by Tessa Belle Dillman Photography

It has been a year since The Librarians premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, UT. Twelve months later, director and producer Kim Snyder remains in awe of the response—at Sundance and since.

“I never dreamt that we could make a movie called The Librarians that would garner hundreds of theaters to demand it for repeat screenings and [be] sold out,” says Snyder. “Librarians and regular folks who don’t know anything about it are intrigued. They show up, and they want to know more.”

In the year since Sundance, The Librarians has played in more than 150 theaters in the United States and Canada, screened at more than 100 film festivals, and received 22 festival jury and audience awards. It has reached approximately 10,000 librarians at conferences, festivals, and theaters, and been seen in the United Kingdom, Norway, Italy, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic. The trailer has gotten 2.65 million impressions across social media platforms.

And now it’s time for its wider release to the public with its February 9 premiere on PBS as part of the network’s Independent Lens series.

This is not the culmination of the project, but a continuation of a process that Snyder hopes not only educates viewers but moves them to action.

“I see the film as a movement,” Snyder says.

She knows her documentary didn’t start the movement. She spent three and a half years chronicling the actions of the individuals leading the way and knows of many organizations fighting alongside them. She has watched as screenings and panel discussions have not only provided catharsis and vindication for the librarians involved, along with tearful standing ovations of gratitude, but sparked immediate action.

Kim Snyder

“I get up and feel great about every day that we do a Q&A and put these panels together and grow the posse,” says Snyder. “You see organizing happening on the spot. You see the change happening literally as you’re sitting in the room in those 30 minutes after the film. It gives you a sense of agency and hope, and that’s exciting.”

Now, as it hits PBS, she hopes the documentary can spread the message wider.

“Sometimes a film has a way of breaking through different silos,” she says, noting that her team is working with PEN America, Penguin Random House, and EveryLibrary, among other organizations. “Now [they] have a narrative to hitch on to and rally world citizens around.”

The documentary was born when the Peabody-winning director and producer saw a story about a Texas congressman targeting 850 books. She then learned about a grassroots organization fighting back—FReadom Fighters, cofounded by school librarian Becky Calzada and retired school librarian Carolyn Foote. Following a long-honed instinct that there was a story to be told, Snyder traveled to the Texas Library Association (TLA) conference in April 2022 to meet with Calzada and Foote and speak with librarians dealing with the censorship attacks.

Snyder was struck by what she saw.

“The first shock was, ‘Oh my goodness, there’s so many people in trauma,’” Snyder says. “I have come to understand trauma and have been around it, and I was struck by the depth of that trauma for a lot of these people. I was touched, and empathized with the ethical choices that they were being presented with, and the Sophie’s Choice that they were often being put in. I was empathetic equally to those who are bravely speaking out, like these FReadom Fighters, as well as a large contingent of librarians who might not be in a position to do that.”

Early on, Snyder saw a kind of purity in the librarians’ integrity and public service. She researched the role of librarians throughout history and thought about what role they have always served and what they represent now.

As time went on, “I started seeing them like every other selfless public servant,” Snyder says. “Like firemen, they see a fire, and they’re trained to show up when there’s smoke. Or doctors who take a Hippocratic Oath and show up in places in the world when there’s a mass medical need. I saw them that way and, as the film has rolled out, even more and more so.”

The documentary “became a journey with them to move from trauma to documentation, understanding what they were experiencing of harassment, of the threat of criminalization on the table, [and] in many cases, deciding, ‘I’m going to speak up, I’m not going to cave to fear,’” she says.

At TLA in 2022, Foote told Snyder that librarians were the canaries in the coal mine. Watch the public spaces, Foote said—the attacks weren’t going to end in school libraries.

“Little did I know four years ago how prescient Carolyn’s words would be,” Snyder says. “We sit in a place where the attack on our freedom of expression has permeated so many different layers, from museums to colleges and mainstream media. I feel that the librarians right now symbolize the firewall to preserving our global democracy. As we know, it’s out of the playbook of so many fascist and totalitarian playbooks throughout history to go after the information, to go after the libraries, to go after the librarians as the gatekeepers.”

She and her production team will continue screenings and are working on special events throughout the year in an effort to engage citizens to ask important questions about what is happening in their communities and be moved to act. When she eventually steps away to take on her next project, she will carry the influence of these women who have impacted her life professionally and personally.

“My greatest joy is in having gotten to form true friendships with these particular librarians,” Snyder says. “It’s a sisterhood right now. We are all in a [text] chain. They make me laugh every day. They are wicked smart, funny, resourceful, and just so brave. They are my role models every day.”