“The Librarians” follows library professionals on the front lines as they fight an unprecedented surge of book bans and censorship across America. Lori has director Kim A. Snyder and former high school librarian Julie Miller from the documentary.
Kim Snyder and Julie Miller – The Librarians (2026)
SIDEWALKS host Lori Rosales interviews filmmaker Kim A. Snyder and former high school librarian Julie Miller about the documentary film, “The Librarians.”
The award-winning documentary, “The Librarians,” offers a gripping, human look at the escalating wave of book bans unfolding across the United States. Premiering on broadcast TV via PBS’s “Independent Lens,” the film follows a courageous network of besieged librarians as they unite to examine how book restriction policies are shaping library collections.
PLEASE NOTE: This online version of the interview is slightly different than how it appeared on the TV episode with host segments rearranged.
Mini-Biographies:
Kim A. Snyder is an Academy Award-nominated and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker whose documentary career spans over two decades of exploring resilience in the face of crisis. She made her directorial debut with the acclaimed “I Remember Me” (2000), a personal investigation into Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and later co-founded the BeCause Foundation, where she produced socially conscious shorts like “Alone No Love” (2007), “One Bridge to the Next” (2008), and “Crossing Midnight” (2009). Snyder gained significant national attention with “Welcome to Shelbyville” (2011), which focused on immigrant integration in the American South, before directing her high-profile trilogy on gun violence: the Peabody-winning feature “Newtown” (2016), the Netflix original short “Lessons from a School Shooting: Notes from Dunblane” (2018), and the Sundance hit “Us Kids” (2020). Her most recent works include the 2025 Academy Award-nominated short “Death by Numbers”, following Parkland survivor Sam Fuentes, and the 2025 feature “The Librarians”, which documents the frontline battle against book banning in America.
Julie Miller is an educator and professional librarian from Florida who is a central subject in Kim A. Snyder’s documentary “The Librarians.” She served as a high school librarian in Clay County, Florida, where she became a prominent advocate for student access to diverse literature during a period of escalating book challenges. In 2024, her testimonial about the experience was published in “Trouble in Censorville: The Far Right’s Assault on Public Education and the Teachers Who Are Fighting Back.” She currently serves as a library manager in Jacksonville, Florida.
- Official Site: The Librarians
- Official Site: Independent Lens
Interview Credits:
- Recorded: February 4, 2026
- Host / Producer: Lori Rosales
- Editor: Richard R. Lee
- Special Thanks To: Independent Lens (PBS), Radical Gaslighters, ITVS, KA Snyder Productions, Pretty Matches Productions