Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at Sundance 2025, How to Build a Library is both an intimate portrait and a rallying cry. Filmmakers Maia Lekow and Christopher King follow two magnetic Nairobi women, writer Wanjiru “Shiro” Koinange and publisher Angela Wachuka, as they take on the extraordinary task of renovating the crumbling McMillan Memorial Library. Once a whites-only institution, the building now becomes a stage where questions of memory, ownership, and cultural renewal play out in real time.The film’s strength lies in its protagonists. Shiro and Wachuka are not trained archivists or architects; instead, they are visionaries whose commitment and friendship power the restoration. Lekow and King capture their humor, frustrations, and unguarded moments with a sensitive lens, allowing us to feel the weight of bureaucracy and political games alongside them. Without ever lapsing into heavy-handedness, the filmmakers show how each step of cataloguing, fundraising, and negotiating becomes an act of cultural resistance. The struggle over what to preserve and what to discard highlights not only the material decay of a building but also the lingering colonial structures that shape public space and imagination. In this way, the film operates as a quietly radical meditation on post-colonial identity and the reclamation of narrative.Alongside these layered themes, the documentary brims with life: warm exchanges between the women, tense community meetings, and evocative sequences set to Maia Lekow’s original music. The score, rooted in Kenyan rhythms with contemporary flourishes, underscores both urgency and joy, reminding us that libraries are not dusty relics but living, breathing spaces. With moments of laughter, conflict, and grace, How to Build a Library is ultimately less about bricks and books than about rewriting the future.Nicole Guillemet