Documentary about small-town Kansas newspaper raid will debut on global stage
After more than two years of work, an Overland Park filmmaker will see her documentary premiere on a grand stage: the 2026 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
“Seized” covers the fierce debate about the abuse of power, journalistic ethics, local journalism and the United States Constitution, according to the description on Sundance’s website. Director Sharon Liese and her team spent countless hours uncovering the dynamics in Marion, Kansas, a small town 2 1/2 hours west of Kansas City, after the Marion Police Department raided the Marion County Record and its owner’s home.
Then-police chief Gideon Cody illegally searched the paper’s newsroom and the home of editor and publisher Eric Meyer. His mother, 98-year-old Joan Meyer, was also searched, and she died shortly after the raid.
Cody, a former Kansas City police captain hired in Marion in 2023, raided the properties as part of an investigation into alleged identity theft by a Marion County Record reporter, but the basis for the searches quickly fell apart. A local prosecutor withdrew the search warrants and Cody resigned weeks after the raid. Cody now faces one felony charge of interfering with the judicial process.
Liese’s documentary started out as a story about abuse of power and the First and Fourth Amendments, but she said that once she got into it and began talking to residents, it became more of a story about how a small town and its newspaper relates to one another.
“The story’s a microcosm of what’s going on in the country, and not just from a political sense,” Liese said. “It’s how we relate to each other and how we live in community together.”
Body-cam and surveillance footage will be shown in the documentary, and she said it’ll highlight tensions between the Marion County Record and the town of Marion, and how these tensions ultimately created a perfect storm for the raids to occur.
It’s unlike any of her past documentaries which focus on social justice topics, like Emmy Award-winning film “The Flagmakers.”
Going into Marion, Liese thought the town would firmly support the newspaper, but over the two years of reporting and getting to know the community, that wasn’t the case. Learning from many of the residents was one piece of the puzzle she and fellow producers had to put together for the 94-minute film.
“I really wanted people to see the humanity in the story and didn’t want people to learn about the characters in a binary way,” Liese said. “It’s a story about journalism, new journalism, does journalism need to be adapting to what people are asking for from journalists?”
“It’s also about small-town dynamics, and I don’t want people to look at cops in a binary way, so it was very important to the whole team to put a human face on all of the people that were involved in this.”
It’s a story that’s still playing out to this day, since Cody’s trial was delayed until the summer. Cody’s attorneys requested the delay because of the documentary, saying it could negatively influence jurors in the county, according to a report from Wichita CBS affiliate KWCH.
The Marion County Board of Commissioners also agreed to more than $3 million in combined payouts to those impacted by the raids.
“Seized” premieres Sunday, Jan. 25, and will be available for online screening from Jan. 29 to Feb. 2. Liese’s film is one of 10 documentary films chosen to compete in the U.S. documentary category and was chosen out of thousands of submitted films.
She couldn’t share whose voices were specifically used, but said one section that was left on the cutting room floor due to time was a group of journalists who traveled from Kosovo to learn about the raids and its effects. Liese said it was fascinating to meet them and compare their stories of violations committed against the press.
Liese hopes it’ll be showcased at future film festivals throughout the year and picked up by a distributor to get it on streaming services.
