A still from "The Perfect Neighbor" by Geeta Gandbhir showing body cam footage of a blurry person.

‘The Perfect Neighbor’ uses police body cam footage to tell a deadly story

Geeta Gandbhir’s deeply upsetting documentary follows the case of Ajike Owens, who was killed by a woman from across the street

The film premiered this month at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Courtesy of Sundance Institute

In June 2023, Ajike Owens, a single, Black mother of four, was shot dead by her elderly white neighbor, Susan Lorincz, who claimed Owens was trying to break her door down. The deadly encounter capped off a year of neighborly disputes about where, on their suburban street, Owens’ young children were allowed to play, which led Lorincz to make numerous calls to local law enforcement. The shooting wasn’t captured on camera, but the wider circumstances around it had been recorded for months via the body cameras of arriving officers—footage that Indian American director Geeta Gandbhir assembles into a living cinematic document.

The Perfect Neighbor opens with 911 calls activating police units in Marion County, Florida on the night of the killing. By the time they arrive to help Owens, they’re already too late. The majority of the film chronicles the preceding year and a half, during which Lorincz repeatedly summoned the cops to her street, making claims about the local children (most of them Black) taunting and troubling her, which no neighbor can corroborate.

Director Geeta Gandbhir.

Director Geeta Gandbhir.

Asad Faruqi

Through body cam footage, news clips, and a few ambient shots filmed for the production, The Perfect Neighbor weaves a piercingly detailed tapestry that represents modern America in microcosm. As it happens, Florida is one of many places across the United States that has a stand-your-ground law, allowing for deadly force with the pliable caveat of self-defense, which has led to an uptick in racially motivated shootings. With this outcome in mind, the film slowly lays its foundation by presenting ridiculous scenarios, wherein Lorincz says one thing—about how the local children are out to get her—while everyone else on her suburban street says the opposite, claiming that she hurled racial slurs at children. Even her white neighbors don’t back her up, and the resident sharing the patch of grass near her home (a piece of public property) is all too happy to let the local kids play football there.

Each arrival of a new set of officers makes the situation seem ludicrous. They diffuse it as best they can, but they’re largely on the side of the other residents, and merely tolerate Lorincz’s strange behavior. However, since the quarrel’s outcome is known thanks to the opening prologue, each frivolous 911 call brings us closer to tragedy, lacing even the movie’s levity with a sense of dread. And, by pulling from police body cameras—a video source so closely associated with watching brutality unfold—the film’s primary lens is one of violence in the first place.

The individual police officers are all diligent. Apart from the occasional use of racially loaded language—like referring to one of Owens’ kids as a “young Black male,” practically describing him as suspect even though he’s a mere bystander—they remain friendly and understanding. They feel a part of the local community, and seem invested in its safety. However, while the individual cops are mostly decent, law enforcement as a system proves otherwise in the aftermath of the shooting, given who they actually protect in the long run, all but justifying Gandbhir’s use of the state as a primary witness, imbuing the film with the potential for violence and white supremacy.

A still from "The Perfect Neighbor" by Geeta Gandbhir showing someone holding a flashlight in a dark place.

"The Perfect Neighbor" will be available to stream from Thursday through Sunday.

Courtesy of Sundance Institute

However, in the interim, the cops’ physical and emotional proximity to the residents provides a sense of intimacy, allowing us to witness kids just being kids, adults being protective, and a community coming together. This is also aided by the fact that Gandbhir isn’t a mere stranger or interloper, but has a connection to the neighborhood—Owens was the best friend of Gandbhir’s sister-in-law—and avoids merely chronicling Black trauma as a state of existence to be gawked upon.

Rather, it’s just one facet of experience, existing in sharp contrast to a fairly jovial, personably norm. It may seem surprising at the outset, but The Perfect Neighbor is also an incredibly funny movie, owing to how frankly the young children navigate the strangeness of having the police called on them repeatedly—itself an absurd notion that speaks to how the United States’ systems function at large. They’re lucky these particular cops are the ostensible “good guys,” even though their collective function ends up being harmful in the long run.

When things finally go awry, and the movie’s timeline catches up to the shooting, the proximity of the body cameras offers a heartbreaking look at how gun violence rips through communities. The Perfect Neighbor becomes deeply upsetting in these moments, setting the stage for an epilogue that—while rife with legal terminology—is downright enraging in its depiction of the way “justice” is defined, and how some laws that serve individualism can be destructive to the larger social fabric. Through judicious editing by Viridiana Lieberman, Gandbhir and her team use a unique source of surveillance, meant to keep violence in check, in order to explore how violence is perpetuated in the first place, and the mechanics that grant it permission.

The Perfect Neighbor premiered this month at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It will be available to stream from Thursday through Sunday.

Published on January 29, 2025

Words by Siddhant Adlakha

Siddhant Adlakha is a critic and filmmaker from Mumbai, though he now lives in New York City. They're more similar than you'd think. Find him at @SiddhantAdlakha on Twitter