Raid film selected for 2nd festival

Fresh off its critically praised premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, “Seized” has been accepted for the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri.

The 92-minute film will be shown March 5, 6, 7, and 8 at four different theaters in Columbia.

In announcing the film, the festival wrote:

“Marion, Kansas: small town USA, home to the weekly newspaper, the Marion County Record, in print since the 1800s.

“ ‘SEIZED… but not Silenced,’ shouted the headline in summer 2023, just days after local law enforcement raided the newspaper office and the homes of the city’s vice mayor, the editor / publisher Eric Meyer, and his 98-year-old mother, Joan, a co-owner of the paper, who died the next day.

“The attack on local news became national news. Footage from police body cams and security cameras provides unique access to the raids and their aftermath.

Interviews with Meyer, townspeople, and government officials tell a complex story as director Sharon Liese examines how a ‘tiny and old-fashioned’ hand-folded newspaper is a microcosm of threats against a free press in the U.S.”