The small town of Marion, Kansas (population roughly 1,900), made international news after police raided the offices of the weekly Marion County Record on August 11th, 2023. The brazen raid, led by power-drunk, corrupt police chief Gideon Cody, who'd grown suspicious of the newspaper's reporting, extended to the home of the paper's editor and owner, Eric Meyer. Body camera footage from the raid shows Eric's 98-year-old mother and newspaper co-owner, Joan, upset, telling the officers in her home, "You know, if I have a heart attack and die, it's all your fault... If I die, you're going to be sued for murder." Joan Meyer died the following day.
The incident caused shockwaves over the alarming and dubious assault on the freedom of the press and its constitutional protections. Eric Meyer became a cause célèbre in journalistic circles, and Gideon Cody and the Marion County Police Department became symbols of Trump-era attacks on the press, proof that the rhetoric had real-life consequences, as the quiet Midwestern town of Marion squirmed in the spotlight.
Filmmaker Sharon Liese had the chance to turn her lens on Marion for a deeper look in the award-winning 2026 documentary Seized. By allowing everyone involved to tell their side of the story, Liese created a balanced, often funny film that cuts through the headlines and noise to reveal the nuanced human stories behind the controversy. It also highlights the challenges small-town American newspapers (like The Mountain Eagle) might face.
The Palace Theater in Albany will host a free screening of the film with a panel discussion on Nov 7th, presented by Times Union CEO George Hearst III, the film's executive producer. Seized will be streaming on HBO this December.
I spoke with Sharon Liese on Zoom in late October, shortly after the film won the Changemaker Award at The Woodstock Film Festival.
Bradley Towle: Thanks for meeting with me, and congratulations on the Changemaker Award.
Sharon Liese: Thank you. Yeah, it was quite a surprise and an honor.
BT: You've been making documentaries for at least a decade?
SL: It'd be 20 years, maybe now.
BT: What's different now from the way it would have been maybe 10 years ago or so?
SL: Well, when people talk about contraction, it's definitely real. I feel like there just aren't as many streamers or outlets that you can go to to sell your project. Funders are being bombarded by all of us filmmakers because we all want to do our work and need support, so it's been very challenging. I feel very, very fortunate I was able to raise enough money to finish the film and have HBO pick it up. But it's tough out there right now.
BT: I remember this story [about Marion] in the news, and I imagine other filmmakers were orbiting it as a project. Was that the case?
SL: That's really interesting that you bring that up, because that was my reluctance at first. I thought everybody else was going to be wanting to do the story, and I didn't know if I wanted to get in the scrum of that, so I hesitated. I grew up in Saratoga Springs, but I live in Kansas, about two hours away from Marion. I didn't know how close I was to Marion; I never even heard of Marion. But I heard about it on NPR when I was driving, that this raid had just taken place, and I was like, "It's in Kansas, so can't be that far away." It's not my typical type of story to tell, because I usually do a story that's off the radar; something nobody else is looking for. I made a film called Transhood where I followed five trans, non-binary kids for five years, and no one knew I was working on it. I mean, it's a big topic, and lots of themes that reach out into the world, but I was just sort of quietly doing my work.
So, when this happened, I was like, "Wow. I don't know," because everybody's going to want to do this. Then I found out I was only two hours away, and I realized that their equipment had been seized, so you couldn't email them or get them on their cell phones, but I could drive th