The Perfect Neighbor

Almost all of this documentary is police body-camera footage. Geeta Gandbhir and her producing partner Nikon Kwantu obtained an enormous archive of camera and audio recordings released through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Owens family's attorneys. What you watch is not reconstruction but the record itself. It begins in the autumn of 2022. In Florida, a woman named Susan Lorincz repeatedly calls police to complain about children playing on the vacant lot beside her house. Every call is logged. The complaints escalate, and in 2023 Lorincz shoots and kills her neighbour Ajike Owens, a mother of four, through a closed door. Florida's stand-your-ground law sits at the centre of what follows. It premiered at Sundance in 2025 and won the Directing Award in US Documentary, then took five Critics Choice Documentary Awards and an Academy Award nomination for Documentary Feature. It streams on Netflix. Who it is for: viewers who want the record rather than the edit, at the point where race and gun law intersect. Who it is not for: anyone expecting distance. The material is first-hand and distressing, and the film softens nothing.