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Followed by a discussion with director/producer Kim A. Snyder, New Jersey librarian Martha Hickson and producer Maria Cuomo Cole in person!
One Night Only
Librarians emerge as first responders in the fight for democracy and our First Amendment Rights. As they well know, controlling the flow of ideas means control over communities.
In Texas, the Krause List targets 850 books focused on race and LGBTQia+ stories – triggering sweeping book bans across the U.S. at an unprecedented rate. As tensions escalate, librarians connect the dots from heated school and library board meetings nationwide to lay bare the underpinnings of White Christian Nationalism fueling the censorship efforts. Despite facing harassment, threats, and laws aimed at criminalizing their work – the librarians’ rallying cry for freedom to read is a chilling cautionary tale.
“A gripping story of what is at stake when curiosity and thinking are endangered…” -Variety
WINNER Best Documentary Jury Award Sarasota International Film Festival
WINNER Best Documentary Jury Award Dallas International Film Festival
WINNER Best Feature Film Award Milwaukee Film Festival and Denver Women + Film
WORLD PREMIERE Sundance International Film Festival
Academy Award nominee & Peabody Award-winner Kim A. Snyder’s latest feature documentary, THE LIBRARIANS made its World Premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, and has already garnered multiple festival awards (Best Doc Sarasota and Dallas and Audience Award Milwaukee). THE LIBRARIANS will be released theatrically and internationally in late 2025 and broadcast on PBS Independent Lens in early 2026.
Snyder’s most recent short, DEATH BY NUMBERS was nominated in 2025 for an Academy Award, and has received multiple festival awards. DEATH BY NUMBERS is the first Oscar Nominated film about gun-violence to be co-created by a gun-violence survivor, writer Sam Fuentes.
Her documentary, US KIDS premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, winning 14 subsequent festival awards. Her short film, LESSONS FROM A SCHOOL SHOOTING: NOTES FROM DUNBLANE, premiered at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival and was awarded Best Documentary Short followed by the DocDispatch Award at the 2018 Sheffield DocFest and a Grierson Award nomination. LESSONS… is a Netflix Original.
Prior, she directed the Peabody award-winning documentary NEWTOWN, which premiered at Sundance 2016. NEWTOWN screened at premiere festivals worldwide and was theatrically released followed by a national broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens and Netflix.
Snyder’s other works include the feature documentary, WELCOME TO SHELBYVILLE, nationally broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens in 2011, and over a dozen short documentaries. Kim’s award-winning directorial debut feature documentary, I REMEMBER ME was theatrically distributed by Zeitgeist Films. In 1994, she Associate Produced the Academy Award-winning short film TREVOR, which spawned The Trevor Project, a leading national not-for-profit addressing LGBTQ teen suicide.
Kim graduated with a Masters in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and resides in New York City.
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Maria Cuomo Cole is the Peabody and Emmy award winning producer recognized for making social impact on highly relevant issues with compelling artful storytelling. She has most recently produced the Academy Award® nominated DEATH BY NUMBERS documentary short film, THE LIBRARIANS (Sundance 2025, PBS/Independent Lens) feature documentary, and US KIDS (Sundance 2025) feature documentary — all in collaboration with Director / Producer Kim A. Snyder. The film team partnered on LESSONS FROM A SCHOOL SHOOTING: NOTES FROM DUNBLANE and NEWTOWN, which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, also directed by Kim A. Snyder. Filmed over the course of nearly three years, NEWTOWN documents a traumatized community fractured by grief and driven toward a sense of purpose. After broadcast on PBS, the film was theatrically distributed across the country, and later by Netflix International. In 2015, she executive produced THE HUNTING GROUND, directed by Kirby Dick, which investigates the epidemic of sexual assaults on college campuses. This Emmy and Peabody Award-winning film premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, aired on CNN and was released on Netflix in 2016. Cuomo Cole worked with the same team as an executive producer of the 2014 Oscar®- nominated, THE INVISIBLE WAR, about the epidemic of rape and sexual violence in the U.S. military and served as a catalyst for federal policy reforms. THE INVISIBLE WAR won two Emmy® awards and a Peabody. Cuomo Cole’s 2010 documentary, LIVING FOR 32, about the tragic gun shooting on the Virginia Tech University Campus, was short-listed for an Academy Award®, aired on Showtime and was distributed by BBC Worldwide. The film achieved significant social impact at screenings in numerous festivals, and on The National College Campaign to End Gun Violence
Martha Hickson recently retired after 20 years as a high school librarian. Her work has been featured in School Library Journal, Booklist, and CNN Online. Her defense of intellectual freedom has been recognized with awards from the NJ Association of School Librarians, the NJ Library Association, the American Association of School Librarians, and the National Council of Teachers of English. In 2022, the National Coalition Against Censorship presented Martha with the Judith Krug Outstanding Librarian Award. And the American Library Association awarded Martha with the Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced with Adversity in recognition of her “energy and bravery in the face of … persistent and ongoing hostility,” while advocating for students’ First Amendment right to read.
