"Geeta Gandbhir's The Perfect Neighbor, which premiered in the US Documentary section of this year's Sundance, is likely one of the first feature docs primarily composed of police body camera footage. Sifting through footage with editor Viridiana Liberman ( The Sentence), Gandbhir builds out a suspenseful and heartbreaking portrait of neighborly violence in a close-knit Central Florida community, after white woman Susan Lorincz fatally shot Ajike Owens-Gandbhir's sister-in-law's best friend, though Gandbhir didn't know Owens personally."
"Gandbhir: Initially, we didn't know if we were making a film; our point was to agitate, to bring attention to the case, to draw media to it, because we were concerned that Stand Your Ground would get in the way of Susan Lorincz's coming to any sort of justice. They released her initially and we thought that she would walk. We weren't sure-it's Florida, there is a precedent for these issues with the Trayvon Martin case."
Geeta Gandbhir's The Perfect Neighbor assembles police body camera footage to create a suspenseful, heartbreaking portrait of neighborly violence in Central Florida after white woman Susan Lorincz fatally shot Ajike Owens-Gandbhir's sister-in-law's best friend. Gandbhir sifted through footage with editor Viridiana Liberman and worked with the victim's family, who sought to agitate and attract media attention. Organizers feared Stand Your Ground and Florida precedents could prevent legal accountability. The film appears amid ongoing reverberations of Black Lives Matter and legislative efforts to remove critical cultural studies, underscoring tensions over public safety, race, and law.
Read at Filmmaker Magazine
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