Academy Award-winning Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson sat down with Geeta Gandbhir to discuss her Oscar and Bafta-nominated feature documentary The Perfect Neighbour, about the manslaughter of Ajike Owens, a Black mother of four by her white neighbour, Susan Lorincz, who claimed “stand your ground” rights in her defence.
The Netflix film uses police bodycam footage to expose how a two-year, racially-motivated dispute over children playing outside escalated into the fatal shooting.
At the beginning of their conversation, Questlove asked Gandbhir to distil the essence of her film. “For me, I think this story is really a microcosm that holds a mirror up to our society, about this beautiful small community, which Ajike Owens was a part of, and how one outlier, emboldened by ‘stand your ground’ laws and her access to a gun, through that was able to destroy everything,” she answered.
“The story is really the lead up to it, which is something we, again, [hardly ever] get to see, and when a terrible crime is committed against us, particularly people of colour, then it’s the aftermath that sort of details those things. But it’s really about the intersection of racism, polarisation, anger, and, again, predatory laws that lead to violence.”
Click on the link above to watch the whole conversation between Geeta Gandbhir and Questlove.
