FILMMAKERS
KIM A SNYDER’S most recent film Death By Numbers was Oscar-nominated for Best Short Documentary and garnered 2024 Montclair Film Festival Best Short Documentary and Honorable Mention Jury Award from Doc NYC. Her most recent feature documentary The Librarians (PBS / Independent Lens) premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and is an official selection at numerous festivals nationwide. Prior films include Us Kids premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, followed by SXSW, Sheffield, and Full Frame, where it received the Kathleen Edwards Bryan Human Rights Award and 14 subsequent festival awards. Prior she directed the Peabody award-winning documentary Newtown, which also premiered in the US Competition at Sundance 2016. Her short documentary Lessons From a School Shooting (2018 Netflix Original, 2018 Tribeca Best Short Documentary). Snyder’s other works include the feature documentary, Welcome to Shelbyville, nationally broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens in 2011, and over a dozen short documentaries. Kim’s award-winning directorial debut feature documentary, I Remember Me was theatrically distributed by Zeitgeist Films. In 1994, she Associate Produced the Academy Award-winning short film Trevor, which spawned The Trevor Project, a leading national not-for-profit addressing LGBTQ teen suicide. Kim graduated with a Masters in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and resides in New York City.
Sam Fuentes | Writer
On February 14, 2018 a gunman wielding an AR-15 entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and fired on students, faculty, and staff. Seventeen people lost their lives and many others were wounded. Sam Fuentes was amongst the injured in the Parkland tragedy, and while fortunate to be alive, her body and life changed forever. She has bullet shrapnel permanently embedded in her legs and behind her right eye, and currently manages symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). She lost revered friends and faculty members. Despite these tragic events, today, Sam is resolved and committed to a poignant mission: to make sure that no child or adult is devastated by senseless and preventable gun violence ever again. She is currently a film student at Hunter College and lives in New York City.
Janique L Robillard | Producer
JANIQUE L ROBILLARD is an independent documentary filmmaker and freelance producer. Currently, she is producing two films with Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Kim A. Snyder – DEATH BY NUMBERS, which is nominated for the 2025 Academy Awards®: Best Documentary Short Film, and THE LIBRARIANS (PBS/Independent Lens) which is making its world premiere at 2025 Sundance Film Festival. She was an Associate Producer for Jeremiah Zagar’s THE FIX docu-series (Roku, 2022), and has developed numerous documentary films and series for acclaimed directors like Lina Plioplyte and clients including Netflix. Her freelance work also includes live action and animated content, broadcast commercials for Nike and other major brands and music videos. Janique actively seeks opportunities to elevate marginalized communities in film, evidenced in her short film 1000 Times (a women’s MMA documentary) and on-going collaboration with Free Body Project, including their short FROM THERE TO HERE. Janique earned her B.S. from S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and her M.F.A at Maryland Institute College of Art.
Maria Cuomo Cole | Producer
Maria Cuomo Cole is the Peabody and Emmy award winning producer recognized for making social impact on highly relevant issues with compelling artful storytelling. She has most recently produced the Academy Award® nominated Death by Numbers documentary short film, The Librarians (Sundance 2025, PBS/Independent Lens) feature documentary, and Us Kids (Sundance 2025) feature documentary — all in collaboration with Director / Producer Kim A. Snyder. The film team partnered on Lessons from A School Shooting: Notes from Dunblane and Newtown, which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, also directed by Kim A. Snyder. Filmed over the course of nearly three years, Newtown documents a traumatized community fractured by grief and driven toward a sense of purpose. After broadcast on PBS, the film was theatrically distributed across the country, and later by Netflix International. In 2015, she executive produced The Hunting Ground, directed by Kirby Dick, which investigates the epidemic of sexual assaults on college campuses. This Emmy and Peabody Award-winning film premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, aired on CNN and was released on Netflix in 2016. Cuomo Cole worked with the same team as an executive producer of the 2014 Oscar®- nominated, The Invisible War, about the epidemic of rape and sexual violence in the U.S. military and served as a catalyst for federal policy reforms. The Invisible War won two Emmy® awards and a Peabody. Cuomo Cole’s 2010 documentary, Living for 32, about the tragic gun shooting on the Virginia Tech University Campus, was short-listed for an Academy Award®, aired on Showtime and was distributed by BBC Worldwide. The film achieved significant social impact at screenings in numerous festivals, and on The National College Campaign to End Gun Violence.