{"id":98886,"date":"2025-10-16T22:31:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T22:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=98886"},"modified":"2025-10-16T22:31:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T22:31:00","slug":"the-perfect-neighbour-how-a-revolutionary-cctv-film-captures-a-shocking-us-killing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=98886","title":{"rendered":"The Perfect Neighbour: How a \u2018revolutionary\u2019 CCTV film captures a shocking US killing"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>10 Minute, 4 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>
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A critically acclaimed new documentary\u2019s \u201csubversive\u201d use of bodycam and CCTV footage helps it detail a shocking neighbourhood incident that became international news.<\/p>\n

A new documentary explores a tragic incident that occurred in Florida in June 2023, when a white woman, Susan Lorincz, shot her black neighbour, Ajike Owens, through a locked front door, claiming she was in fear for her life. Lorincz later received\u00a0a 25-year prison sentence\u00a0for Owens\u2019s manslaughter. The Perfect Neighbour, directed by Geeta Gandbhir, has been praised by film critics for its groundbreaking approach, as around 90% of it consists of police body camera and CCTV footage. It shows the build-up to the shooting and Lorincz\u2019s increasing hostility towards her community.<\/p>\n

The moment 58-year-old Susan Lorincz is arrested in June 2023 is shown in The Perfect Neighbour through CCTV cameras located in the police interview room in Marion County, Florida. She issues denial after denial to their requests to stand up, be handcuffed, and go with police officers. \u201cNo. I can\u2019t. I\u2019m sorry,\u201d she says repeatedly. Minutes tick by, all of them shown on camera, while three officers persuade her to go voluntarily with them.<\/p>\n

The Perfect Neighbor has been praised for its innovative use of police bodycam and CCTV footage (Credit: Netflix)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Until that interview, Susan Lorincz had been a free woman, not under arrest, despite a few days earlier firing a gun at her neighbour through a locked metal front door. Thirty-five-year-old Ajike Owens, known as AJ, was a restaurant manager and single mother of four children. Audiences learn through that interview that only two minutes before the shooting on 2 June 2023, Lorincz had called police to her house, because she and one of Owens\u2019s children had had a dispute over an electronic tablet. Lorincz tells police that during those two minutes, Owens had banged on Lorincz\u2019s door, shouting that she would kill her, and the older woman shot \u201cin fear for my life\u201d. Lorincz continues to\u00a0maintain from jail\u00a0that she fired her gun out of fear,\u00a0although sentencing her,\u00a0the judge told her he believed the shooting was prompted \u201cmore by anger than fear\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Our mantra as a film team was really \u2018show and not tell\u2019. You don\u2019t have to beat audiences over the head with advocacy \u2013 Geeta Gandbhir<\/em><\/p>\n

Director Geeta Gandbhir\u2019s reconstruction of events has no narration and doesn\u2019t rely on witness interviews, but instead on a doorbell camera, which captures the sound of a shot being fired, and Owens\u2019s son screaming to call 911. Police body cameras track paramedics trying to help Owens after she is shot. Later cameras follow, unrelentingly, as the children\u2019s father breaks the news to them that their mother \u201cisn\u2019t coming back\u201d. And cameras inside the police car show Susan Lorincz, not under arrest, sitting in the back, while a neighbour shouts, \u201cwhy did you do it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Gandbhir tells the BBC that the footage first came to her as she was a family friend of Owens\u2019s. Lawyers acting for the Owens family had requested the material from the police, and the family wanted to know if there might be anything to keep the case in the news. \u201cThere was about thirty hours of video about the case, including doorbell camera, bodycam and cell phone footage, detective interviews with people in the community, as well as audio recordings from Susan\u2019s conversations with the police, when she had called them many, many, many times,\u201d Gandbhir says. \u201cIt was a mess, but we managed to get through it, and that\u2019s when I realised it might be a film.\u201d<\/p>\n

The footage shows that the first time police officers were called to Lorincz\u2019s address because of a dispute with Ajike Owens was in February 2022, when Lorincz claimed that Owens\u00a0had thrown a \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d sign\u00a0that belonged to Lorincz at her and hit her on the leg (Owens said that she had thrown it on the ground and was not aiming it at her neighbour.) No one was arrested.<\/p>\n

Police are called out several times through the following year, as Lorincz makes emergency calls complaining that local kids, including Owen\u2019s children, are tormenting her. \u201cI\u2019m a single woman, I work from home, I\u2019m peaceful, I\u2019m the perfect neighbour,\u201d Lorincz says in another call to the police, when she\u2019s complaining about neighbourhood children playing football on the grass near her house.<\/p>\n

In the documentary footage, the local children appear to dislike Lorincz (they call her \u201cthe Karen\u201d, a pejorative term for a middle-aged woman, usually white, who is perceived as entitled). The footage also shows that they tell officers Lorincz called them a \u201cjack-a\u201d (for \u201cjackass\u201d) and refuse to repeat the entire word.\u00a0In contrast to Lorincz\u2019s alienation from her community, her multiracial neighbours seem close, looking after each other\u2019s children (they would later testify against Lorincz.)<\/p>\n

A fly-on-the-wall perspective<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h2>\n

Writing in Variety, film critic Peter Debruge\u00a0calls the film\u00a0\u201crevolutionary\u201d for what it achieves with such footage; indeed, its narrative depth won Geeta Gandbhir the best documentary director award at this year\u2019s Sundance Film Festival. The Los Angeles Times\u00a0calls it\u00a0\u201con the most visceral level, a documentary horror film built with police footage, [but] it also reveals how a violent tragedy can be unwittingly manifested by unchecked grievance\u201d.<\/p>\n

I believe that the film does a great justice in highlighting the differences of how people of colour and then their counterparts are treated differently \u2013 Pamela Dias<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI come from a narrative background, and I wanted this film to play like a thriller so people would remain engaged and immersed,\u201d Gandbhir says. \u201cOur mantra as a film team was really \u2018show and not tell\u2019. You don\u2019t have to beat audiences over the head with advocacy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to take people on a journey that embeds them within this community, like they were a fly on the wall. I think about the UK series\u00a0Adolescence,\u00a0although it came out after our film was made. It\u2019s the same idea: you allow things to unfold, and for people to live within it and come to their own conclusions about why this happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Film-maker Geeta Gandbhir says she wanted to use the bodycam footage to create a picture of a community (Credit: Netflix)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Racism\u00a0was found to be a motive\u00a0for Lorincz\u2019s hatred of the Owens family. CCTV footage in the film shows her confessing to police that she used a racial slur when speaking with the Owens children, and at the trial, neighbours testified that Lorincz called one of the children a different racist term on the night of the shooting.<\/p>\n

Lorincz\u2019s trial made international headlines partly because of controversy over Florida\u2019s so-called \u201cStand Your Ground\u201d law. It allows, in some cases, for deadly force to be used as self-defence, which,\u00a0it\u2019s been reported, is disproportionately negative for African Americans. In 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a black teenager from Florida,\u00a0was fatally shot\u00a0by George Zimmerman, who claimed self-defence and was not arrested for days. Zimmerman was later\u00a0acquitted of murder. Protests were held over Martin\u2019s killing\u00a0across the US.<\/p>\n

Susan Lorincz also remained free for five days\u00a0while police investigated her claim\u00a0of self-defence. She was charged with manslaughter with a weapon, as it was ruled there was\u00a0insufficient evidence\u00a0to charge her with murder.<\/p>\n

\u2018Subverting the narrative\u2019<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h2>\n

Ajike Owens\u2019s mother, Pamela Dias, tells the BBC that the film allows audiences to question why Lorincz was not arrested immediately. \u201cI believe that the film does a great justice in highlighting the differences of how people of colour and their counterparts are treated differently,\u201d she says. \u201cHad the roles been reversed, I believe an arrest would have been made at once. My daughter was murdered through a locked metal door. She had not made an entry, and this all stemmed from children playing in an open field where they were permitted to by the owner. Susan was fuelled by hatred and racism, and the film unfolds all of that and even more.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time, however, authorities in Florida defended their decision not to arrest Susan Lorincz immediately, saying no arrest could be made because of the state\u2019s \u201cStand Your Ground\u201d laws unless it was proved she did not act in self-defence. \u201cThe laws here in the state of Florida are clear,\u201d\u00a0Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said. \u201cI may not like them. I may not agree with them. But I will follow\u201d.<\/p>\n

Susan Lorincz\u2019s (pictured) trial made international headlines partly due to the controversial \u201cStand Your Ground\u201d law (Credit: Netflix)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The documentary shows Lorincz telling officers, when they came to question her on a separate incident, that she was sexually abused when she was younger by her father.\u00a0She was diagnosed with PTSD,\u00a0but that was ruled not to be a mitigating factor in her sentencing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople might watch the film and think, \u2018oh she\u2019s mentally not well\u2019,\u201d says Gandbhir, \u201cbut she was evaluated and that was not the case. I think you see that actually she was very confident about thinking she was going to get off. She believed the police were on her side and she was in the right. And I think it was in that only her second police interview where she finally realised that her story wasn\u2019t going to hold up. And then you see her disassociate and refuse to get up, but you see who she really is there.\u201d<\/p>\n

While police bodycams are now frequently used in true crime TV shows,\u00a0including a 2018 series\u00a0simply called Bodycam, documentary film-making hasn\u2019t made the same extensive use of them, although 2021\u2019s\u00a0All Light Everywhere\u00a0by Theo Anthony immerses the viewer into the use of police cameras and the rise of a so-called \u201csurveillance society\u201d. Bill Morrison\u2019s 2023 film,\u00a0Incident,\u00a0which was nominated for an Oscar, uses security cameras and police bodycam footage to show the killing of Harith \u201cSnoop\u201d Augustus by a Chicago police officer in 2018. The documentary short captures the final moments of his life and police reactions afterwards, aware that they\u2019re on camera.<\/p>\n

More like this:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u2022\u00a0How The Social Network predicted the future<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a012 of the best films to watch in October<\/p>\n

The officers captured in The Perfect Neighbor, by contrast, are intent on de-escalating tensions, which makes Gandbhir\u2019s use of the bodycam footage \u201csubversive\u201d, according to the New Yorker film critic Justin Chang. \u201cShe uses it not to reconstruct a crime,\u201d\u00a0he writes,\u00a0\u201cbut, rather, to bring to light the hidden drama of a neighourhood. The simple spectacle of children at play, it seems, is all it takes to transform a patch of American suburbia into a gaping, microcosmic wound of racism, paranoia, aggression, mental illness, and gun violence.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gandbhir agrees that she wanted to \u201csubvert\u201d the perception of police body cameras as part of law enforcement, explaining that \u201cfor people of colour, police bodycam footage is often a violent tool that is steeped in institutional racism, often used to justify police violence, as we saw in cases such as George Floyd\u2019s. We wanted to flip that on its head. I wanted to subvert that narrative with this film and use it differently instead to humanise this community.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I do believe that, as people are seeing it as police bodycam footage, they will believe it. It\u2019s coming from the authorities, but again, we\u2019re using it in a way that\u2019s not normally the case. It allows the audience to feel embedded, to feel they\u2019re there. They\u2019re living with this community on this journey that they went on, and feeling the horror of it all, too. The fact that one outlier with a gun changed everything for them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Perfect Neighbour is on Netflix from 17 October.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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