It’s now official. After weeks of speculation regarding its acquisition, Netflix has finalized a deal for The Perfect Neighbor, the documentary that won the U.S. Documentary Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival.
The streaming giant plans to release the film later this year, positioning it as a strong contender for the Oscars. While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, earlier reports suggested that the acquisition figure was around $5 million.
Through police bodycam and dashcam footage, the documentary recounts a tragic incident in Central Florida.
In 2023, Susan Lorincz, a white woman, fired a gun through her locked door, killing her Black neighbor, Ajike “AJ” Owens.
Lorincz cited Florida’s controversial “stand your ground” laws, claiming she feared for her life after Owens knocked on her door following two years of tension over Lorincz’s alleged harassment of Owens’ children.
The Perfect Neighbor is produced by Alisa Payne, Geeta Gandbhir, and Nikon Kwantu for Message Pictures, along with Sam Bisbee for Park Pictures.
The film’s executive producers include Sam Pollard for Message Pictures, Soledad O’Brien and Rose Arce for SO’B Productions, Jackie Kelman Bisbee and Wendy Neu for Park Pictures, and Takema Robinson.
“The Perfect Neighbor is a deeply personal project, created to transform grief into purpose and honor the lasting legacy of Ajike Owens and her family,” Gandbhir said in a statement.
“My team at Message Pictures, along with our incredible partners at SO’B Productions and Park Pictures, are thrilled the film will be available on Netflix, offering audiences worldwide the chance to experience this urgent and powerful story.”
In an interview at Sundance, Gandbhir spoke about her personal connection to the case.
The Perfect Neighbor
“Ajika was a family friend,” she explained. “She was the best friend of my sister-in-law, Kimberly Robinson Jones. And so that is how the story came to me, through my family, and also through my other sister-in-law, Takema Robinson, who’s an EP on this project.”
Pamela Dias, Owens’ mother, also joined at Sundance to share her thoughts on the film.
“Ajika was an everyday mom, and that’s key here,” she said. “She was an everyday mom with four beautiful children. This dispute arose over children playing together in this very close-knit community. They were not doing any harm.
They were often supervised by one of the parents. So, for this to have happened, it’s tragic, it’s devastating, and it’s something that could have happened to any one of us, to any family.
It was important for the story to be told because it unfolds so many layers. You have a close-knit community, you have children, you have the issue of racism, you have police protocol, you have children who lost their innocence. There’s so many aspects to the story that it just had to be told.”
The film was edited by Viridiana Lieberman, with music composed by Laura Heinzinger. Cinetic managed sales for The Perfect Neighbor.
Gandbhir explained that she chose to center the film around police video after the footage was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by attorneys representing Owens’ family.
“I realized that we had the power to kind of flip the body camera footage on its head,” the director noted.
“It’s usually used to surveil communities, it’s used to defend the police, but we could flip that and make it a tool to showcase this beautiful community and who they were before this tragedy.”
Executive producer Sam Pollard praised this creative approach.
“Geeta and Viri [Viridiana] and the team have done something with archival footage, with this body cam footage, that made it so immersive that it’ll challenge all of us as filmmakers now in how to deal with this type of material,” he observed. “And that’s what makes it so unique and so special.”
The Perfect Neighbor screened at SXSW on Sunday and will have additional screenings at the Austin, TX festival on Tuesday and Thursday. Its international premiere is set for March 25 at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, where Gandbhir is expected to attend.
