Library Wars

Overview

Many in the US and in Europe are stunted by the constant rise of former President Trump in thepolls transforming him, despite his legal problems and role in the January 6th insurrection, into an almost sure nominee of the Republican party in the 2024 elections. It might be the clearest sign of the crisis in the American political system. There are many causes for this crisis, one of them being the cultural wars that transformed politics in the US into identity politics dividing the electorate and calcifying political differences and party loyalties. For the past decades, abortion divided the country and the voters. Recently newer forms of cultural war have emerged, exploiting core identity issues, in places no one could have imagined: American schools and public libraries. The rapid rise of the fight over books from a local initiative into a national phenomenon, the transformation of libraries into new battlefields in the cultural wars is the subject of our film.