The Perfect Neighbor
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The Quirks of the Best Documentary Category
Best documentary has become the toughest Oscar category to predict in recent years, especially when it comes to nominations. The documentary branch has become famously quirky in recent years, passing over such populist, acclaimed, and decorated titles as Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, American Symphony, and Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story. Past performance is no guarantee of success—I’ve even heard rumors that some voters will refuse on principle to nominate a film by a previous Oscar winner—and geography is not destiny. Even as the best international feature category has skewed more European in recent years, the documentary branch has gotten […]
by Tyler Coates on Feb 3, 2026 -
“We Have to Think Deeply about Community Policing”: Geeta Gandbhir on The Perfect Neighbor
With Geeta Gandbhir’s The Perfect Neighbor premiering on Netflix today, we’re reposting our interview with Gandbhir out of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. — Editor 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. Given […]
by Ritesh Mehta on Oct 17, 2025 -
Sundance 2025: The Perfect Neighbor, Sly Lives
Stagnation (long-term) and change (imminent) hang over this year’s Sundance. In 2027, the festival will relocate to one of three finalist sites—potentially still a Salt Lake City/Park City split, with the balance of power now reversed between the latter and former, through the rumor vine says Cincinnati or Boulder are more likely. (Please, lord, deliver us unto the midwest or thereabouts.) A Variety article headlined “Sundance in Cincinnati? Hollywood Worries Film Festival Won’t Be the Same Without Park City” actually reports nothing of the sort; the voices regretting Sundance’s imminent departure to a less demanding altitude come from two Utah […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 24, 2025 -
“Something Dangerous is Always Lurking Just Beneath the Surface” | Geeta Gandbhir, The Perfect Neighbor
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? Our film is set in Ocala, Florida, just a 40-minute drive from Orlando—a place where beauty and stark contradictions are in constant tension. On one side, you have sprawling, wealthy horse farms and ranches; on the other, economically vulnerable communities living in close proximity to these affluent areas. The neighborhood at the heart of […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 24, 2025
