Freedom to read advocacy, a necessary part of the library and education landscape for years, has taken on an added layer of importance since January, when the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights labeled book bans a “hoax.” A new documentary, Banned Together—available to stream April 10—shines a spotlight on three young freedom to read advocates, and how, together and individually, they are standing up to make a difference.

Book bans were very much in the headlines in early 2023, when producers Jennifer Dumas Wiggin, Tom Wiggin, and Allyson Rice read about the high school seniors in Beaufort, SC, who were fighting to reinstate 97 books removed from their school libraries. At the same time, filmmaker Kate Way had traveled from Massachusetts to South Carolina to talk with the young women. They realized that there was a complex national story to tell along with the local one, unfolding in real time, and the four joined forces. The account of the high-schoolers’ evolving activism, and of the growth of censorship efforts across the country, became the feature-length documentary Banned Together, directed by Way and produced by Rice and the Wiggins’ Atomic Focus Entertainment.

The film, completed at the end of 2024, won three Best Documentary Feature awards (and was nominated for a fourth) at film festivals in October and November. It will be available to stream on Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime, with Fandango to follow shortly. Kanopy and Video Project will handle the film’s educational and library distribution.

LOCAL STORY, NATIONAL STORY

Dr. Ibram X. Kendi with Troy Brazoban, Bennett, and Foster Film still courtesy of Banned Together

Banned Together follows the three teens—Isabella Troy Brazoban, Elizabeth Foster, and Millie Bennett—as they progress from commenting at heated school board meetings to taking their advocacy to the national level. Along the way they meet with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD); Justin Hansford, executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center; fellow youth activists; and authors whose books have been banned or challenged, including Jodi Picoult, Juno Dawson, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, Ellen Hopkins, and Erica L. Sánchez. Some will remember their appearance at the Rally for the Right to Read at the 2023 American Library Association (ALA) Annual conference in Chicago. Alongside the unapologetically inspiring coming-of-activism story, however, is a frank look at the rise of groups such as Moms for Liberty, where they fit into the bigger picture of efforts to control access to knowledge, and the harm they cause to educators and librarians who are targeted.

“We needed to find a way to tie the local story in Beaufort into helping tell the national story,” said Wiggin, “so that anybody who watches this can feel that it affects them—which it does.”

The production team funded the film as they shot, raising money as needed to send their crew where they needed to be, sometimes “at the 11th hour and 59th minute,” according to Rice—such as a supporter who came through as they were leaving for Chicago, not sure how they would finance the trip. “Literally, we were on the plane, not having the funding,” recalled Dumas Wiggin. “And that morning, the investor signed his papers and wired us money.”

Sponsors including PFLAG National, National Education Association, and Interfaith Alliance will support the film’s impact campaign, sending representatives to organizations and conferences that screen Banned Together to facilitate discussions where possible. The Gates Foundation recently hosted a screening for employees to celebrate Black History Month. Rice attended, along with Dorri C. Scott, an anti-racist research scholar who began working with the filmmakers last fall, and a PFLAG National board member, for a panel discussion. The film has held more than 75 screenings to date, in some 27 states, Australia, and the UK.

EDUCATING ACTIVISTS

Bennett, Troy Brazoban, and Foster the Big Chair at ALA Annual Film still courtesy of Banned Together

Some of the hardest-hitting footage is of the local Beaufort meetings, where Moms for Liberty representatives read book passages out of context and harassed freedom to read allies, including students. “These are adults claiming to be fighting to protect the children,” said Rice, “and they’re verbally abusive to these young women.”

But while those moments are not always easy to watch, they helped transform Troy Brazoban, Foster, and Bennett from individual members of DAYLO (Diversity Awareness Youth Literacy Organization), a student-led book club and community service group, into confident and outspoken First Amendment advocates—an exhilarating progression to watch over the film’s 90 minutes.

“Seeing them behind a podium at school board meetings, looking down and getting a little nervous, and then by the end they are comfortable speaking in front of people” was a pleasure, said Rice. “They’re very powerful. Each one of them is strong in their own unique way.”

They were also perceptive about what these challenges represented, even before the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. In conversation with Raskin, Foster notes that book challenges “are only the beginning.”

It was clear to all—at the time and through research the filmmakers conducted with Olivia Little, senior investigative researcher at Media Matters for America, that the local challenges were part of “a really well-planned ultraconservative movement. They were playing the long game, and Moms for Liberty was used as a tool to get parents motivated by frightening them, basically,” said Rice. “We were looking at all of this, saying, ‘This is about a political power grab and activating people who didn’t necessarily know that they were being activated for that reason.’”

In addition to the film’s pro-activism message, the producers hope it will reinforce the importance of paying attention to local politics—particularly school boards—and of voting. “These kids that are now stepping up and fighting against these book bans in their schools, most of them are seniors, or are becoming seniors,” said Dumas Wiggin. “They will be eligible to vote in [the next] election. That is where the difference needs to come from.”

And a final message: “The qualities that [the Right] are defining as ‘woke’ are love and kindness and compassion and empathy, and those are the things that people need to be leaning into strong, every single day,” said Rice. “Don’t let them take the best qualities of you as a human being away from you. Whatever people do to go out there, whether it’s speaking at school board meetings or going to a protest or supporting boycotts, whatever it is that someone chooses to do in terms of their activism and advocacy, also lean into all of those really beautiful woke human qualities, because being woke means you are awakened, and people need to be awakened to what’s going on around them, and awakened to what how they are being manipulated through fear.”

The Banned Together website offers resources for fighting censorship. “To all the librarians and educators out there who have been struggling in this fight, we want them to know that we see them, we honor them and the work they do, and that we will continue to fight for them as much as we’re fighting for books and for the right to read in this country,” said Rice.

You can watch the Banned Together trailer here.