The Perfect Neighbor

Name: The Perfect Neighbor
Director: Geeta Gandbhir
Genre: Crime/detective, Documentary, Drama, Thriller
Released: 2025
Duration: 1 h 36 min

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Crime/detective
Documentary

2025
Geeta Gandbhir
96 mins
15

Summary

Police bodycam footage reveals how a long-running neighborhood dispute turned fatal in this documentary about fear, prejudice and Stand Your Ground laws.

IMDB

Review

A star rating of 5 out of 5.

Jayne Nelson

On 2 June 2023, mother-of-four Ajike Owens was shot and killed by her neighbour, Susan Lorincz. This harrowing Oscar-nominated documentary follows the build-up to the incident and its aftermath, with footage comprised almost entirely of recordings from police officers' bodycams. What unfolds is the story of Lorincz, a 58-year-old white lady, terrorising the Black residents of her street with complaints about children playing near her property. The police are called over and over again to deal with her 911 calls until Lorincz finally makes her horrifying decision. The incident was a test of Florida's controversial "stand your ground" laws, and this film dissects their inadequacy with a very sharp scalpel. With the permission of Owens' family, film-maker Geeta Gandbhir explores their shock and grief on the night of the shooting, and the community outrage that followed. It's a difficult watch, but a true feat of documentary film-making: a howl of escalating fury captured, with deceptive simplicity, by law-enforcement officers who sadly failed to connect the dots.

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7.1/10