CPH:DOX 2025 - The Perfect Neighbor

There is a before and after ‘The Perfect Neighbor’, both in contemporary non-fiction and in one’s own experience. The first half is shot entirely on the body cams that the American police are equipped with. The second half is almost entirely filmed by a surveillance camera in an interrogation room. And in between, we get a deeply upsetting story about a neighborhood dispute between a Black mother and a paranoid white woman in a Florida suburb. 

A conflict that starts small and escalates to a hyper-intense and heartbreaking climax. We are on a residential street where the only white resident repeatedly calls the police to stop the neighborhood kids from playing on her lawn. And in Florida, you have the right to defend yourself when you feel someone is trespassing on your private property. 

Geeta Gandbhir tells the unflinching story through material that transcends what we normally associate with documentaries or even cinema. At the same time, she shines a bright light on the legal blind spots in a painful American context.