For years, disgruntled neighbor Susan Lorincz called the police on the children who play in the vacant land next to her Florida home. Initially, the kids and parents commiserate with local law enforcement about her antics. But her hostility takes a sinister and lethal turn when it escalates into the shooting of Ajike “AJ” Owens, a beloved and vibrant mother of four.

Told almost entirely through police bodycam footage, Director Geeta Gandbhir’s The Perfect Neighbor probes the aftermath of Florida's controversial "stand your ground" laws and reveals the consequences that can occur when individuals feel emboldened by the law to act on their fear and prejudice. The film won the Directing Award in the 2025 Sundance US Documentary Competition.

On October 16, after the Eastern Region Special Projects Committee Documentary Series screening in New York, Gandbhir discussed the making of the film during a Q&A moderated by Director Yance Ford (Power).

During the conversation, Gandbhir revealed why she opted to show the community in the film.

“You see the community as they are. You often only see in these types of tragedies, the aftermath. You see the grieving family. You maybe see the funeral, maybe there’s the day of, but you don’t get to see the community as they were before. To me, this beautiful little community is really the best of what we are in society – a multi-racial community, living together, raising children together, a strong social network. Being able to recreate that community for the audience was so important.”

Gandbhir’s other directorial credits include the feature length documentaries Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power, Hungry to Learn, I Am Evidence and A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers; and episodes of the documentary series Katrina: Come Hell and High Water, Eyes on the Prize III: We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest, Through Our Eyes, Born in Synanon, Black and Missing and Why We Hate.

Gandbhir has been a DGA member since 2016 and serves as a member of the DGA Documentary Committee.