‘The Perfect Neighbor’: Inside Netflix’s ‘undeniable’ new documentary

Ajike “AJ” Owens was a devoted 35-year-old mother of four when she was shot and killed by her 58-year-old neighbor Susan Lorincz in June 2023. The tragedy, which rocked the otherwise peaceful and close-knit community of Ocala, Florida, followed Lorintz's years of regularly calling police to report neighborhood children, including Owens, for playing in a vacant lot next to her home. Lorincz, who is white, said the children – most of whom are black and under 12 – pose a threat, citing one of the nation's many “Stand Your Ground” laws, which allow people to use lethal force in defense if they feel their lives are in danger.

Now, award-winning director Geeta Gandbhir, backed by producer husband Nikon Quantu and non-fiction luminaries such as Sam Pollard and Soledad O'Brien, has chronicled the two years leading up to Owens' death in “Perfect Neighbor” It premieres Friday on Netflix following an Oscar-qualified theatrical production. In the moving and powerful documentary “Vérité,” composed almost entirely of footage from police body cameras, the case shows the dangers of such laws, which are all too easy to abuse or misuse in a society where not every claim of self-defense is treated equally.

A jury found Lorincz guilty of manslaughter in August 2024, but the effects of her erratic and violent behavior continue to affect the Owens family and their neighbors. Gandbhir, whose sister-in-law was a close friend of Owens, hopes that “The Perfect Neighbor” will honor Owens' memory and show how our country's growing fear of the “other” and the rise of “Stand Your Ground” laws are a deadly combination.

You didn't originally plan to make a film about this tragic murder, but rather document the aftermath of the crime. Why?

We received a call the night of Ajike's murder and immediately swung into action to try to help the family. We acted as liaisons with the media. They were hoping that we would try to keep this story alive in the media, simply because they were concerned [it would be overlooked]. This is Ocala, Florida, the heart of the city where Stand Your Ground was born. Susan wasn't arrested for four days because they were conducting a Stand Your Ground investigation. We didn't really think about creating a document. We were simply afraid that there would be no justice.

This happened before…

Yes, Trayvon Martin case being the most famous.

But in the case of Adjike, there is plenty of video and audio recordings of what happened. How did you manage to get so much material from the police department?

Anthony Thomas, who works with [civil rights attorney] Benjamin Crump sued the police department under the Freedom of Information Act and forced them to release all materials they had related to the case. That's how we got the footage. We received police body camera footage, interviews with detectives, Ring camera footage and cell phone footage. There were also all the audio calls Susan made to the police and then after the night of the incident. [killing]calls made by the community. Basically, we were handed a bunch of stuff in disarray, and Anthony said, “Sort through this. See if you can find anything that makes sense for the news, like snippets that we can share.”

I was surprised at how much material there was, and I'm only talking about what made it into the film.

This tells you how often Susan called the police. Essentially body camera footage [was a result of those calls]. What's interesting is the reaction when we showed the film to the community. They agreed to be a part of it, so we wanted to show it to them before it came out. We are very concerned about the care of participants and the ethics of this process. They said they didn't think we had it all because Susan [allegedly] sometimes I called the police, about 10 times a day. They [said they] I think the police gave us maybe something they could organize where they wouldn't look terrible. But they don't think that's all.

Ajike's mother, Pamela Diaz, played an important role in keeping her daughter's memory alive and in the search for justice. How did she feel about you making this film?

I went to Pamela and said I could make a film and maybe we could change something. Trying to change gun laws or the Stand Your Ground law is a big effort, but maybe we can reach people. She said yes. This is a woman who, by her own admission, was blinded by grief. [when Ajike was killed]who said she couldn't see two feet in front of her. But even then she knew her daughter’s story needed to be told. She said her daughter died protecting her children and she felt it was her turn to stand up.

I told her that the material was graphic. But Pam was inspired Emmett Till and how his mother had an open casket funeral and asked photographers to take pictures because she wanted the world to know what happened to her child. Plus we were thinking about George Floyd and [how footage of his killing] caused a movement. It's a terrible thing to witness, but if we allow these things to continue to happen in the shadows, they will continue to happen forever. Only by witnessing can everything change.

What about your emotional state while filming this film?

See all my gray hair? [Laughs.] I later realized that for me it was a work of grief because I needed to know what happened. I had to find out what happened. I couldn't understand how someone could take a gun and kill their neighbor because of children playing nearby. How did we get here? I was simply consumed by so many questions that the work was, in a sense, cleansing. Then, once we had thought about it and I thought it was a movie, I invited Viridiana Lieberman, our editor. We had the same vision of what we wanted and we were really committed to living the body camera footage.

Why not use storytelling?

I worked on stories and scripts for 12 years before moving into documentary filmmaking. I learned that the best verité documentaries are about showing, not telling. If you tell people what they see, there is room for doubt, bias, or questions about it. But to me these images ring true. There is no reporter on site. No one influences what happens in the area except the police who come and ask questions. I felt it made the footage and the story compelling. No one could tell that we were asking provocative questions down there. And the body camera footage is so compelling that I wanted people to experience what the community experienced.

How would you describe what they went through?

Their experience was a bit like a horror movie. You have this wonderful, diverse community living together with a strong social network, looking out for each other and each other's children. What struck me most about the body camera footage is that you can actually see this community as it used to be. [the tragedy]and you'll never get it. Horrible shootings happen all the time and we see the consequences, right? We see a grieving family, we see a funeral. We have to recreate what their life was like before. And in that you see this beautiful community thriving and living together and it was so profound. I wanted to rebuild their world so everyone could see the damage one of them had done with a gun. How she was the only one who repeatedly called the police and saw threats where there were none.

We're used to seeing police body camera footage used as evidence after a police brutality incident or as entertainment on true crime shows. Your film tells a completely different story.

I wanted to stop using body camera video. Body camera footage is a cruel tool of the state. It is often used to criminalize us, especially people of color. It is used to dehumanize us, to spy on us, to defund the police. With this piece, I wanted to flip that story and use it to humanize this community.

Why do you think the police didn't view Susan as a threat?

She is a middle-aged white woman. She used her race, her status as a weapon and continued to try to use the police as a weapon against society. The fact that she used hate speech towards children [she allegedly called them the N word]. She took them off. She threw things at them. She swore at them. But the police didn't consider her anything more than a nuisance. … After she called the third time and it was unreasonable and did not involve an actual crime, some action should have been taken to reprimand her. They didn't tell the community they could charge her: “She's harassing all of you. She's harassing your children.” It was systemic neglect. And frankly, should policing be all-encompassing for everything? Probably not. But they were not equipped. They didn't take the necessary steps and the worst outcome happened: we lost Ajike and Susan is in prison for the rest of her life. I'm sure this is not the result she wanted.

There is a moment in the film where a police officer knocks on Susan's sliding glass door. She doesn't know it's a policeman. She opens the curtain and screams at him in a terrifying, almost demonic voice. This is nothing like her nervous, well-intentioned calls to 911.

Yes, jump scares. That was one of the moments where I thought, “Oh, there she is.” And the 911 call after she shot Adjike. She was hysterical. Her voice then changes as she says, “They keep bothering me and bothering me and they won't stop.” I felt my heart clench because I thought, “Oh, she’s really here.” She has this way of finding a compromise between the victim and the aggressor. A bit of Jekyll and Hyde. It's scary.

The victim/aggressor dynamic is part of what makes “stand your ground” laws so dangerous. They can be used as weapons.

The Stand Your Ground policy originated in Ocala and is now in effect in various forms in about 38 states. This is a law that encourages people to take up arms to resolve a dispute. If you can differentiate your neighbor to such an extent that [killing] them, the question is, what else will you do? What else will we tolerate? As people, how we show up in our communities is a reflection of how we show up in the world. This movie takes place on this tiny street, but it's a microcosm of what's happening today. Susan represented danger, and this small community represented the best of what was under threat.