Several documentaries have made their premiere this year at the Sundance Film Festival. Notably, Seized and Birds of War explore government censorship and limits on free speech.
Seized centers on journalists at the Marion County Record, a local newspaper in a rural Kansas town, after state law enforcement raided their officesin an overt attempt to stop efforts to report on police corruption.
Director Sharon Liese spoke at the American Civil Liberty Union’s “Free Expression and the Future of Film” panel on Jan. 24, playing a harrowing clip from the aforementioned film. “When I first heard about [these events] it was like a canary in the coal mine story. It seemed not completely unusual, because people have been after the press for a long time, but I didn’t realize that two and a half years later it was going to be even more relevant,” Liese said.
She began filming the project in 2023. She met with the co-owner of the Record, Eric Meyer shortly after the seizure of the paper. Liese said he is a “champion” of free press.
“He just wanted to get the story out there,” she explained to the audience.
“We live in a very scary time for the First Amendment,” co-panelist and attorney Abby Cook said, after the clip played. She described the attack on the newspaper as the “worst type of discrimination on free speech.”
Birds of War Looks Into Ban on International Journalists
Birds of War, directed by Lebanese journalist Janay Boulos and Syrian activist Abd Alkader Habak, chronicles both filmmakers’ own story, documenting 13 years of their lives throughout the Syrian revolution and its aftermath. Since international journalists had been banned, Boulos depended on Habak’s on-the-ground presence to chronicle the war’s events.
Habak said he risked his life to document the conflict. “When we were under the siege…me and a couple of my friends made the decision to document everything around us,” he said during a panel at Canon Creative Studio. “I still remember all the footage I have.” He added that he felt as if the footage he had was “a part of him,” adding “We never knew what was going to happen.”
Filmmaker Carlos Lopez Estrada echoed the importance of raw storytelling during the panel. “I find a lot of purpose in just thinking about this small community [of filmmakers] that we’ve been cultivating,” he said. “They’re going to be able to tell stories that are unfiltered, stories that are dealing with issues that are very pressing and very timely to their communities.”
More from Georgia Metcalf: Little Miss Sunshine Celebrates 20 Years With Cast Reunion
Read more of our Sundance festival stories and enjoy all of our Arts and Culture coverage. And while you’re here, subscribe to our print magazine and get 6 copies of Salt Lake magazine each year.
This story is jointly published by Salt Lake magazine and non-profit Amplify Utah to elevate perspectives in local media through student and emerging journalism.
