Sylvia Beach’s tireless efforts to publish one of the world’s most famous books, and running what would become one of the world’s most famous bookstores, grew out of her appreciation for literature as well as people. The daughter of a Presbyterian minister, Sylvia Beach was born in 1887 and grew up in Princeton, NJ. She became a sole-proprietor of the bookstore Shakespeare and Company she founded in 1919 with a lump sum of money provided by her mother Eleanor Beach to get started. Her goal was to provide English-language literature to the reading public in France. Beach offered her customers a place to meet and enjoy the company of others who wrote and a place to discuss modern literature.

Left Bank seeks to reveal the true story of the unsung women behind a literary giant and their role in early 20th Century feminist activism. Left Bank is based on 10 years of research by writer Lisa Reznik. Her short narrative film Left Bank Bookseller, about the courage of American bookseller Sylvia Beach to publish Ulysses in France, has been screened around the world. Reznik’s passion for the subject matter inspired the vision for a deeper telling of the story as a hybrid feature documentary.