Across the United States, a quiet war is being waged—not with weapons, but with words, policies, and the power to decide what stories children can read. Tonight, PBS premieres The Librarians, a powerful new documentary that pulls back the curtain on the escalating crisis of book bans and the librarians standing in the crossfire. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Kim A. Snyder (Welcome to Shelbyville, I Am Evidence), the film arrives at a critical moment: 2025 has already seen more than 10,000 book challenges across the country, the highest number on record, according to the American Library Association. What begins as a look at library collection standards quickly becomes a stark portrait of division, fear, and the fight for intellectual freedom.
The Librarians follows real librarians in communities from Texas to Pennsylvania as they confront censorship campaigns that have turned school board meetings into battlegrounds and public libraries into political flashpoints. We meet a rural Texas librarian who quietly keeps banned titles hidden in a back office, risking her job to ensure students have access. In Florida, a high school librarian describes receiving death threats after refusing to remove books on race and gender identity. In Missouri, a public librarian fights a state law that could criminalize providing “harmful” materials to minors. Each story is intimate and urgent, showing how ordinary public servants have become targets in a culture war that often has little to do with literature and everything to do with power.
Snyder’s direction is restrained but unflinching. There are no dramatic reenactments or ominous scores—just raw interviews, school board footage, and quiet moments of librarians shelving books under fluorescent lights. The film lets the subjects speak for themselves, and their words are devastating. One librarian, tears in her eyes, says: “I didn’t sign up to be a revolutionary. I signed up to help kids find books that make them feel seen.” Another, after a heated board meeting, admits: “I’m scared every day I go to work now.”
The documentary also digs into the broader forces behind the bans: well-funded national organizations, social media campaigns, and elected officials who have made book challenges a political litmus test. It draws chilling parallels to historical censorship efforts, including Orwellian warnings about controlling narratives through controlled reading. Yet it never loses sight of the human cost: the students denied books that could help them understand themselves, the parents caught in the middle, and the librarians who feel abandoned by the very institutions meant to protect them.
Critics have hailed The Librarians as essential viewing. The New York Times called it “a sobering, necessary wake-up call,” while IndieWire praised its “quiet power and moral clarity.” On Rotten Tomatoes, early festival screenings earned a 94% critics score, with audiences describing it as “terrifying in the best way—because it’s real.”
Premiering tonight (December 1, 2025) on the PBS app and PBS YouTube channel, The Librarians arrives free to stream at a time when access to information feels more fragile than ever. It’s not just about books being banned; it’s about who gets to decide what stories matter—and who pays the price when those stories are silenced.
Watch it tonight. Because if librarians are afraid to speak, the rest of us should be terrified.
