User reviews

Watched at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Frustrating, vital, and carefully crafted is the best way to describe documentary. Filmmaker Kim A. Snyder creates an impressive and upsetting documentary that explores the importance roles for librarians and exploring how the United States have become troubled and terrifying they have become. Using great discussions and themes explored throughout, Snyder really gets into the topics carefully and well-crafted, exploring and exposing of how book banning, politics and religious agendas have become an major issue with the country and effecting individuals.

Alongside with a good presentation and structure, many of it's purposes and themes are well-explored as Snyder doesn't hold back. Discussing how books are necessary and how librarians are fighting against the political censorship the United States and government is forcing. It's scary to think the fact the United States across themselves are implementing these changes, which perfectly demonstrates how problematic and worrisome the United States has become.

Various moments have moved me and frustrated me in the best ways possible. Regarding structure, the documentary is a typical structure but it succeeds with discussing it's themes, ideas, and purpose perfectly. Overall, this is one of the best documentaries at Sundance thus far.

Well made, well documented, well performed. A fantastic, scary and overwhelming 1t30h in Oslo tonight. Thank you fellow librarians in US and Kim A. Snyder. Will never forget your work or your efforts.

We will do our best to stay posted and be active on our part. Suppressions exist. May we see Part two next year?

It's an honor to be part of this project and witness the story of our heroic librarians brought to the screen.

This film is more than a documentary. It's a stark warning about the coordinated efforts to censor, control, and dictate what knowledge we're allowed to access.

And to those who thought librarians would be easy targets? They couldn't have been more wrong.

I saw TL at the OUT ON FILM festival in Atlanta, today. I went to the screening thinking it was an interesting subject, but was blown away by the quality of the documentary -- especially the editing and the development of the subject matter, which reaches a climax with the juxtaposition of two family members on opposite sides of the issue (a brilliant series of riveting scenes that unforgettably dramatizes the high stakes of the debate). Informative, emotionally charged, replete with interviews of figures involved in the struggle against censorship --- this is documentary filmmaking at its best.

This film is such an important piece of work. It was masterfully filmed and edited beautifully. I found it informative, disturbing, inspiring, and hopeful all at the same time. I am thankful for the producers of this film for highlighting this important fight for truth and free speech. I am truly grateful to to all the librarians in the film who stood up and spoke out in such a public way. I'm also grateful for all the unseen librarians in the trenches who do the work every day. Librarians are superheroes in the fight for democracy and intellectual freedom.

A documentary should be impartial. As a none US citizen this was more like a propaganda about one side being the right ones, and the other is simply evil.

" They are not just banning books they are banning the best books" While not saying what books or way they were banned. If a book amid towards children has descriptions of sexual acts then it shouldn't be avilable to children. Sure, you can't banne the books from being sold, but that isn't what they are doing here, they are just saying schools shouldn't pay to have them, which is fair.

As a retired librarian (from Canada), it is imperative that this kind of documentary is both made and shown, especially given the attacks on individual freedoms now being experienced by our southern neighbours. No one is being forced to read a certain book, nor made to view a piece of art they might find offensive. But banning books of any kind is the first step in controlling what a citizenry can think and how it frames both the past and future. Freedom of choice and expression are fundamental to any democracy. Reading a book about black historical events will not turn you into a radical of either side - you already have those beliefs before you read. Reading about a gay rabbit will not turn you into one if you consider yourself to be heterosexual. Just like reading about a bank robbery isn't going to make you want to go out rob your nearest credit union. Fear-mongering and threatening people with censorship is how dictators and authoritarian regimes rule. This documentary shows how brave librarians understand and try to enforce what it means to accept differences in a democratic society and the price to be paid. It's very timely and frightening.

Anyone who pledges for knowledge to be censored should be worried for their own limited vision and how they pretend to do the same to others.

This isn't the first time in history when a political movement does its best to suppress different voices, and probably won't be the last; but these very brave women and men stood up their ground and defended what's fair.

Great documentary.