Three weeks before the Sundance Midnight Madness premiere of her zombie dramedy Didn’t Die, director Meera Menon (whose credits appositely include episodes of The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead) and her partner Paul Gleason (who co-wrote and shot the film) lost their home in the Eaton fire that devastated Altadena, Los Angeles. Not only that, the film’s producer Erica Fishman and her partner Geoff Boothby, who edited the film, also lost their home in the fire. The irony is that Didn’t Die centers on a group of five in the zombie apocalypse, trying desperately to hang on to their […]
by Ritesh Mehta on Jan 29, 2025Geeta 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. Given the world context of a déjà vu US regime, the ongoing reverberations of Black Lives Matter and the steady bulldozing with anti-democratic and dangerous legislation […]
by Ritesh Mehta on Jan 27, 2025