"Already, the film has earned six nominations for the Critics Choice Documentary Awards, as well as a spot on the Oscar-predictive DOC NYC Short List. When Gandbhir first found out about the murder of Ocala, Florida resident Ajike "AJ" Shantrell Owens, 35, who left four children motherless on June 2, 2023 when her white neighbor, Susan Lorincz, shot and killed her, Gandbhir was mourning a family friend."
"It was my way of processing what had happened. Ajike was close to two of my husband's cousins, we're all very close. That connection felt personal. The making of the film, because I have no other skills, frankly, and I don't know how to do anything else, was what I had to offer the family, and also a way of processing."
Geeta Gandbhir directed The Perfect Neighbor to reconstruct a murder through assembled video evidence and to process personal grief tied to the victim. The film centers on the June 2, 2023 killing of Ajike 'AJ' Shantrell Owens by her white neighbor, Susan Lorincz, and the impact on Owens's four children and extended family. The project received the Sundance 2025 U.S. Documentary Directing Award and multiple nominations. All case materials arrived via the family's lawyers on a police-issued thumb drive, including Ring, dash, cell phone, and body camera footage, detective interviews, and a 911 call. Gandbhir moved from editing to solo directing for this film as an act of personal and communal processing.
Read at IndieWire
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