'There have been multiple cases of people being shot for pulling into someone's driveway because they made a wrong turn or ringing the wrong bell because they made a mistake.'
'That is also the pathway to fascism.'
'The way you divide people is to make them fear each other. Then a strong man can come in and say, "I will protect you".'
On June 2, 2023, a woman was shot dead by her neighbour in a small town called Ocala in Florida. The murder happened in a neighbourhood where there were more African American residents. The victim Ajike Owens was African American, while the woman who pulled the trigger, Susan Lorincz, was white.
Owens had gone to Lorincz's front door after an altercation happened between Owens' children and Lorincz, a racist woman who would often have arguments with the neighbourhood children.
She would use racial slurs, including the N-word and also call the police. The police would arrive, somewhat try to settle the arguments. They never took any action against Lorincz.
After the murder, Brooklyn-based, award-winning Indian American film-maker Geeta Gandhbir arrived with her crew to record the racial tensions. Soon Gandhbir and her team realised that the police always arrived in the neighbourhood wearing bodycams.
They wanted to protect themselves, but the cameras captured the details of the police trying to calm the neighbours, while also talking to Lorincz, who always came across as sane in the presence of law enforcement officials.
The police initially thought this was a case of the stand-your-ground law where people have a right to self-defence if they feel threatened by trespassers on their property.
As the case against Lorincz went on trial, Gandhbir, using the bodycam footage, pieced together a film and a disturbing image of the African American community subjected to racism by their white neighbour.
Lorincz was eventually found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Gandhbir's film The Perfect Neighbor premiered early this year at the Sundance Film Festival where she won the Best Director award in the US documentary section. To qualify for the Oscar campaign The Perfect Neighbor opened in limited US theatres on October 10 and is currently streaming on Netflix.
Aseem Chhabra spoke to Gandhbir earlier this year, after the director's Sundance win. The conversation focused on the case and the underlying racism in the US.
Geeta, take us back to the time when you heard about the case.
Ajike Owens was my sister-in-law Kimberly Robinson's best friend. Kim is now helping raise Ajike's kids.
My other sister-in-law Takima Robinson is an activist. The community had already stepped in the activism part because they were worried that Susan Lorincz would never be arrested.
Ajike used to talk a lot to her mother Pamela. She had plans for things that she was going to do in the future. In one of the last conversations, she said to Pamela, 'You know, just you wait Mom, one day the whole world is going to know my name.'
I promised Ajike's mother that I would tell her story. I wanted it to have an impact on the world. I believe it's our job to carry on her legacy and her name.
You learned about the case through your family. It was in the media by then also. At what stage did you think that there could be a documentary and that you could get the police footage?
Takima had brought Benjamin Crump's legal team on board very quickly.
Crumps was also the trail attorney for the George Floyd case, (the African American man who was choked to death by a white police officer in Minneapolis, while he uttered his last words 'I can't breathe').
Susan was not arrested for four days, while the police were investigating it as a stand-your-ground case.
Initially, we started filming to make noise and to basically put pieces out to share with the media.
I thought we could keep working on this, and at some point we would string it together, and perhaps there would be a film.
Couple months into the process, Anthony Thomas, the lawyer who was assigned the case by Benjamin Crump's team, did a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request against the police department. They released all the material they had -- the body cam footage, all the detective interviews.
That's when I realised that there was a portrait of this community before the incident.
The cameras were used for surveillance against often vulnerable communities of colour and they were used to protect the police, to show how helpless the police were to do anything about this issue. And Ajika ultimately ended up being killed.
When we received the footage, I realised that was the film.
Many times the cops are white. There are some black cops also. Most times they seem reasonable. In fact, Susan also seems reasonable when she is talking to the cops.
We know that is just a show and how racist she could be otherwise. I know there's underlying racism everywhere, not just in America. But still you see the kids, black and white, playing together.
I am trying to figure out if one can definitely say the cops were racist? Or is it the law itself that renders to racist situations?
It's systemic. First of all, if Susan had been black, she would have been treated completely differently.
You see when the cops bring Susan to the prison and she won't leave the room.
They talk to her as if she is a child.
If that had been a black or a brown person, threatening the kids, using hate speech against them, calling them the N-word -- what do you think would have happened?
Before the shooting, they did not say to the children, or to the parents, you should file a report against Susan. They were just like, 'Oh, just avoid her. She's just cranky.' Had she been Muslim, or an Indian, or Latinx, it would have been an issue.
But because she looks like someone in their family -- an older aunt, a mother -- they did nothing until she actually picked up a gun. Even then they took their time.
Susan used her white privilege as power.
She kept saying 'I didn't know the N-word is bad.'
The N-word is hate speech. She used hate speech against the children. We need to be very clear about it.
Your editor and you must have sat with a lot of footage and that would have taken some time.
We went through the footage a couple months after the shooting, and the trial kept getting moved.
We didn't know what the outcome of the trial would be but we understood with the footage that the story was complete.
I often ask documentary filmmakers this question. Here is the story and you knew that a woman has been killed and it was a case of racism, but how did you visualise the script?
How did you visualise where will it end? Because until the jury came out, you didn't know how it's going to end.
We knew we didn't want to use any talking heads or to humanise the community.
We didn't want to insert our point-of-view.
It was the community's voice but we wanted people to feel that they were literally dropped in to this neighbourhood and see for themselves.
The cops come in so frequently and they are well behaved, but they are still sort of an invading force.
We had enough information through the interrogation.
The decision to actually arrest her, that would have been one way how we could have ended the film. There would have been a card at the end of the movie saying we are awaiting the outcome.
It was always the intersection of race, law enforcement, white privilege, all these things. It feels like this community in Florida is sort of a microcosm of what's happening in the US.
That's very interesting. And I can see why you got the Best Director award because there's the thinking process. And you shared your award with your editor.
My editor Virdiana Lieberman is my partner. We have worked together on a number of films. She's an incredible talent, and there's a shared language between us.
It was very personal and we were all grieving.
Somebody said this to me, 'This film is grief work for you.'
We felt compelled to do it because we were all in pain and I found a purpose through the film. The film is a way for the audience to see what we experienced and we hope that it will impact change.
How do you think the film portrays the cops?
The film portrays them in a flattering light. Sure, there is systemic neglect and racism built into the system but police officers are not social workers.
They are trying to deescalate when it's a white perpetrator. But they are not trained to mitigate and manage community disputes.
There needs to be some social safety in place that can do that, and it didn't exist.
Law enforcement is very flawed and very far from being a catch all.
I would say that stand-your-ground laws embolden people to murder people, particularly white folks to kill black and brown folks because they believe that this is a defence.
If you can prove that you were in fear of your life, the response to this kind of dispute is a gun.
The fact that they are using their weaponising fear, as well these laws, is incredibly dangerous. This is something we need to change.
These laws don't just exist in Florida; they are in 27 states in the US.
There have been multiple cases of people being shot for pulling into someone's driveway because they made a wrong turn or ringing the wrong bell because they made a mistake.
That is also the pathway to fascism.
The way you divide people is to make them fear each other. Then a strong man can come in and say, I will protect you.
It's a very powerful documentary, but also because of the way you made it. At the beginning of the film, you know somebody has been shot, but for the longest time you do not tell us who it is.
I don't think I have said this to anybody else, but there is a Stephen King story It, where all the children see this creature, this malignant.
They know how dangerous it is, but the adults don't see it.
I think this is the feeling of the movie, in some ways, it feels like a narrative horror film. And I wanted the audience to feel that.
In our film also, only the children were afraid to go up on Susan's driveway because they knew. The community, because there was an ingrained distrust of the police, had seen the police do so much harm, they weren't ever going to call on the cops for help. There is so many systemic issues intertwined in this.
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