Grondahl: Local filmmaker’s documentary on newspaper seizure premieres at Sundance
Sharon Liese, formerly of Saratoga Springs, brings “Seized” to Sundance. Her film probes a 2023 Kansas newspaper raid and press-freedom stakes.
By Paul Grondahl, first published in the Albany Times Union on Jan. 21, 2026.
Reprinted with permission
It is 2,200 miles from Saratoga Springs to Park City, Utah, and documentary filmmaker Sharon Liese, who started with a Super 8 camera as a teen in the mid-1970s in Saratoga, will see her film “Seized” premiere at the storied Sundance Film Festival on Sunday.
“I just started crying when I got the call. It is a thrilling moment for a filmmaker,” said Liese, who grew up in Saratoga Springs, graduated from Saratoga Springs High School and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communication from the University at Albany.
The 94-minute documentary about a troubling 2023 police raid on a weekly newspaper in the small town of Marion, Kan., deconstructs a controversial case that gained international attention. In the style of an investigative thriller, Liese exposes the personality clashes and long-simmering conflicts that spawned the traumatic action that contributed to the death of the editor’s 98-year-old mother.
The city of Marion, the county seat, has a population of about 1,900 and is the geographical dead center of the United States.
Attend a screening and discussion with Sharon Liese
4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 7
Palace Theatre
19 Clinton Avenue, Albany NY 12207
Tickets are free. Registration required.
“Seized” illuminates larger questions about local journalism, abuses of power, the relationship between a newspaper’s role as truth-tellers and the community it covers, as well as First Amendment protections of a free press. It asks more questions than it answers.
“It’s such a layered, complex story,” said Liese, who worked 2½ years on the film project, often with a crew of eight. “It took a lot of effort to unpack years and years of tension between the citizens of Marion and its newspaper. What bubbled up in this small town should spur deep conversations about local journalism.”
The First Amendment principles at stake and violations of press protections, along with the filmmaker’s local ties, spurred George R. Hearst III, publisher of the Times Union, to invest in the film. He is an executive producer of “Seized,” the first time Hearst has had a credited role on a movie.
“It’s a siren call for all our journalists and a reminder that if it can happen in Marion, Kansas, it can happen anywhere,” said Hearst, who plans to attend Sunday’s Sundance premiere with his daughter, Emma. “This is a story that needs to be told. It gets to the heart of how the community views its newspaper and vice versa. This film is important to anyone who believes in freedom of the press.”
On Aug. 11, 2023, Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody and officers stormed the newsroom of the Marion County Record, with a circulation of about 4,000. Officers seized the computers and cellphones of reporters and editors. Law enforcement executed a search warrant on the home of editor and publisher Eric Meyer, where his 98-year-old mother, Joan Meyer, the paper’s former editor, agitated by the home intrusion, collapsed and died a day later. Police also executed a search warrant on the home of a local councilwoman.
The police action was seen as a revenge raid after a female restaurateur, Kari Newell, who knew the police chief, was driving with a suspended license after a drunk driving conviction. A Marion County Record reporter, acting on a tip, accessed a public online database to confirm that fact, which impacted Newell’s request for a liquor license at her restaurant. Authorities alleged identity theft in the paper’s reporting, deemed untrue. The search warrants violated press protections against unreasonable searches.
In addition to hundreds of hours of interviews with the newspaper staff and Marion residents, Liese had access to more than 16 hours of police body-cam footage and recordings from surveillance cameras inside and outside Meyer’s residence. During a preliminary hearing in October, Newell testified that Cody called and told her to delete text messages regarding the raid.
In November, Marion County agreed to pay over $3 million and admit wrongdoing to settle lawsuits stemming from the raid. The settlement included a formal apology from the county. Cody is scheduled to go on trial in February for interfering with the judicial process by instructing a witness to withhold
information in a criminal investigation.
“Seized” is gaining early Sundance buzz. Four of six screenings sold out in advance, and it is resonating with recent events, including the FBI’s Jan. 14 search of a Washington Post reporter’s home as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials. The reporter’s phone and two laptops were among the items seized.
While it is exceedingly rare for law enforcement to conduct search and seizure raids at reporters’ homes, the recent FBI search raised alarm among free press organizations about regulations designed to protect journalists against aggressive law enforcement tactics to obtain the identities of their confidential sources.
Sundance is the largest independent film festival in the nation and noted for premiering groundbreaking movies with diverse viewpoints. Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute took over the sprawling film festival in 1985, rescuing it from financial distress. Redford died in 2025 and this year will be Sundance’s last in Park City before moving to Boulder, Colo. in 2027.
“It will be a thrill to be there for the last one in Park City and to honor the legacy of Robert Redford,” said Liese, who hopes to make a distribution deal at Sundance. “There will be a lot of heart and emotion in the air.”
A few days after the 2023 newspaper seizure story broke, Liese drove two hours from her home in Overland Park, Kan. to Marion.
“The big papers like the New York Times and Washington Post swooped in, did their stories and left,” Liese recalled. “A few journalists were still in the lobby, waiting to interview Eric Meyer.”
As the first documentary filmmaker on the scene, “you’ve got the scoop,” Meyer told Liese, who returned with a film crew.
“The key to cinema verite is immediate access when things are happening in real time,” Liese said. “Eric gave me that access. If you miss it, you never get it back.”
Liese and her crew were embedded in Marion and gradually gained the trust of the small-town folks. “We’d been filming for a year when people told us we weren’t getting the whole story. They finally started opening up,” Liese said. The fact that she’s lived in Kansas for 25 years and understands the Midwest sensibility helped, too.
“Seized” was a departure for the Emmy-winning director, who has focused on intimate, under-the-radar stories in “Transhood” (2020), “The Flagmakers” (2022) and “Parker” (2023).
“There was so much international attention on this story, I was anxious at first about taking it on,” Liese said. “In the end, it’s about small-town America and the tensions between the local community and the newspaper’s duty to seek the truth.”
Liese will be joined at the Sundance premiere by several family members, including her son-in-law, Paul Matyasovsky, a producer on “Seized” and her previous films.
Hearst concurs with Liese that the issues raised in “Seized” regarding threats to freedom of the press and protections against government intimidation and overreach amount to “a canary in a coal mine” cautionary tale.
Hearst is the great-great-grandson of George Hearst, who made a shrewd purchase of the Ontario Silver Mine in 1872 for a small sum based on its potential. Hearst developed it into one of the most profitable silver mines in the West, a key factor in Park City’s booming silver-mining economy in the 1870s and beyond. Hearst’s mining ventures helped create his fortune. He later served as a Democratic U.S. senator who used his wealth to create Hearst Publishing by accepting the San Francisco Examiner in 1880 as payment for a gambling debt. His son, William Randolph Hearst, known as “The Chief,” took over management of the paper in 1887 and built the Hearst chain into a vast media empire.
At a time when newspapers are dying following years of cratering revenue, Hearst bucked the trend in 2025 by acquiring the Dallas Morning News and the Austin American-Statesman.
“Hearst made those investments because we believe in local journalism,” said George Hearst, the Times Union publisher. “Without an informed citizenry, democracy is vulnerable.”
Paul Grondahl is the Opalka Endowed Director of the New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany and a former Times Union reporter. He can be reached at grondahlpaul@gmail.com