The Critics Choice Association unveiled the winners of its 10th annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards. The Perfect Neighbor, a Netflix documentary about the deadly consequence’s of Florida’s stand-your-ground laws, nabbed five awards at the gala event held in New York City, including Best Director and the top prize of Best Documentary Feature.
The film is a production of Message Pictures, Park Pictures, and Soledad O'Brien's SO'B Productions, with O'Brien serving as Executive Producer.
The Perfect Neighbor is a 2025 American documentary film directed by Geeta Gandbhir about a shooting incident on June 2, 2023, where a white woman, Susan Louise Lorincz, fatally shot Ajike Owens, her black neighbor, in Ocala, Florida. The film is told in chronological order with limited narration and mostly using pre-existing police footage, such as bodycams, and follows both the lead-up to the killing, the incident itself, and its aftermath, from the neighborhood disputes eventually escalating into the killing to Lorincz's conviction for manslaughter, among other charges. As the killing itself did, the film notably questions the systemic bias in how Florida's stand-your-ground laws are applied.
