LAWRENCE — A documentary about the police raid of the Marion County Record is set to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in early 2026, more than two years after law enforcement stormed the newspaper office, the publisher’s home and a city councilwoman’s home.
Director and producer Sharon Liese says the film looks beyond the First Amendment implications of the raids and dives deeper into the small town of Marion in a way the public hasn’t seen before. She called it “a canary in a coal mine” type of story.
“The story that we eventually told is not what you would expect,” Liese said. “It’s not all about the First Amendment. It’s about what happens between a newspaper and its community in a small town. It’ll make people think about what journalism really is and what people really want journalism to be.”
“Seized” will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival Jan. 22 through Feb. 1. It is one of 10 documentary films chosen to compete in the U.S. documentary category and was chosen out of thousands of submitted films.
Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody and officers carried out a search warrant on the Record newsroom, editor Eric Meyer’s home and a councilwoman’s home in August 2023. The search contributed to the death of Meyer’s 98-year-old mother. Days later, staff published their weekly paper with the headline “Seized but not silenced.”
Kansas Reflector was first to report on the raids, which were based on a nonexistent crime and defied federal and state laws that project journalists. The news brought immediate international scrutiny to the small town of Marion.
Cody is set to stand trial next year for telling a witness after the raids to delete text messages.
Liese, known for other documentaries such as “Transhood” and Emmy-winner “Flagmakers,” was inspired to follow Marion’s story with it being only a few hours away from her home in Overland Park, even though it wasn’t her usual type of story to pursue.
“I was a little hesitant at first because I’d never started with pursuing a project that already had international visibility,” Liese said. “Every documentary filmmaker from New York City to LA is going to be clamoring to get this story, but then again it’s only two hours from my house. So I just thought I’d give it a whirl.”
Record publisher and editor Eric Meyer agreed to participate in a documentary as long as he had no financial or editorial control, and selected Liese because of her dedication to telling the story beyond just the raids. What mattered to him was journalistic storytelling, he said.
