Ajike “AJ” Owens was a devoted 35-year-old mom of 4 when she was shot and killed by her 58-year-old neighbor, Susan Lorincz, in June 2023. The tragedy, which rocked the in any other case peaceable, tight-knit neighborhood of Ocala, Fla., adopted years of Lorincz making routine calls to the police to report neighborhood children, together with Owens’, for taking part in in a vacant lot subsequent to her dwelling. Lorincz, who’s white, claimed that the kids — most of whom are Black and had been below 12 — had been a menace, citing one of many nation’s many “Stand Your Floor” legal guidelines, which permit people to make use of lethal drive to guard themselves in the event that they really feel their life is at risk.
Now award-winning filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir, with the assist of producer-husband Nikon Kwantu and such nonfiction luminaries as Sam Pollard and Soledad O’Brien, has chronicled the 2 years main as much as Owens’ demise in “The Excellent Neighbor,” premiering Friday on Netflix after an Oscar-qualifying theatrical run. Composed virtually completely of police physique digital camera footage, the transferring and highly effective verité documentary makes use of the case to depict the perils of such legal guidelines, that are all too simply misused or abused in a society the place not each declare of self-defense is handled equally.
A jury convicted Lorincz of manslaughter in August 2024, however the repercussions of her erratic and violent conduct proceed to affect the Owens household and their neighbors. Gandbhir, whose sister-in-law was an in depth buddy of Owens, hopes “The Excellent Neighbor” will honor Owens’ reminiscence whereas exhibiting how our nation’s rising worry of “the opposite” and the proliferation of Stand Your Floor legal guidelines are a lethal mixture.
Initially you weren’t planning on making a movie about this tragic killing, however you had been documenting the aftermath of the crime. Why?
We acquired a name the evening Ajike was killed, and we instantly jumped into motion to attempt to assist the household. We stepped in to be the media liaisons. They appeared to us to attempt to hold the story alive within the media, simply because they had been apprehensive [it would be overlooked]. That is Ocala, Fla., the center of the place Stand Your Floor was born. Susan wasn’t arrested for 4 days as a result of they had been doing a Stand Your Floor investigation. We weren’t excited about making a doc, actually. We had been simply terrified that there could be no justice.
That’s occurred earlier than …
Sure, Trayvon Martin’s case being essentially the most infamous.
However in Ajike’s case, there’s reams of footage and audio recordings that captured what occurred. How had been you in a position to acquire a lot of that materials from the police division?
Anthony Thomas, who works with [civil rights attorney] Benjamin Crump, had sued the police division via the Freedom of Info Act and acquired them to launch all the materials that they’d pertaining to the case. That’s how we acquired the footage. What got here to us was the police physique digital camera footage, detective interviews, Ring digital camera footage and cellphone footage. There was additionally all of the audio calls that Susan had made to the police, after which after the evening of the [killing], the calls the neighborhood had made. There was principally a plethora of stuff that we had been handed, in a jumble, and Anthony was like, “Type this out. See if you will discover something that is smart for the information, like snippets we are able to share.”
I used to be stunned at how a lot materials there was, and I’m simply speaking about what made it into the movie.
It speaks to how a lot Susan known as the police. Principally, the physique cam footage [was a result of those calls]. What’s attention-grabbing is the response once we screened the movie for the neighborhood. They agreed to be a part of this so we needed to point out them earlier than it got here out. We’re very involved with participant care and the ethics of this. They mentioned that they didn’t suppose that we had every little thing, as a result of Susan [allegedly] known as the police generally, like, 10 instances a day. They [said they] suppose the police gave us perhaps what they may set up, the place they don’t look horrible. However they don’t suppose that that’s every little thing.
Ajike “AJ” Owens, pictured on the poster, was shot and killed by her neighbor in 2023. The crime is on the heart of Geeta Gandbhir’s new documentary “The Excellent Neighbor.”
Ajike’s mom, Pamela Dias, has been a significant drive in holding her daughter’s reminiscence alive — and in search of justice. How did she really feel about you making this movie?
I went to Pamela and mentioned I may make a film and perhaps we may make a change. It’s fairly an endeavor to attempt to change gun legal guidelines or the Stand Your Floor legislation, however perhaps we are able to attain individuals. She mentioned sure. This can be a girl who by her personal admission was blinded by grief [when Ajike was killed], who mentioned she couldn’t see two ft in entrance of her. However she knew even then that her daughter’s story needed to be advised. She mentioned her daughter died standing up for her children, and she or he felt it was her flip to face up.
I advised her the fabric was graphic. However Pam was impressed by Emmett Until and the way his mom had an open-casket funeral and advised the photographers to take photos as a result of she needed the world to know what had occurred to her child. Plus we thought of George Floyd and [how footage of his killing] sparked a motion. It’s a horrible factor to bear witness, but when we let this stuff proceed to occur within the shadows, then they are going to occur endlessly. It’s solely by bearing witness that issues would possibly change.
What about your individual emotional well-being whereas making this movie?
See all my grey hair? [Laughs.] I noticed later it was grief work for me, as a result of I wanted to know what occurred. I had to know what occurred. I couldn’t perceive how somebody may decide up a gun and kill their neighbor over youngsters taking part in close by. How did we get right here? So many questions had been simply consuming me, so the work was in some methods cathartic. Then as soon as we had all of it strung out and I assumed it was a movie, I introduced on Viridiana Lieberman, who’s our editor. We had an analogous sensibility about what we needed this to be and we actually dedicated to dwelling within the physique digital camera footage.
“Physique digital camera footage is a violent instrument of the state,” Gandbhir says. “It’s typically used to criminalize us, notably individuals of colour. It’s used to dehumanize us, to surveil us, to guard the police. What I needed to do with this materials was flip that narrative and use it to humanize this neighborhood.”
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Instances)
Why not use narration?
I labored for 12 years in narratives and scripted earlier than I segued into documentary. I discovered that the very best vérité documentaries are present and never inform. For those who inform individuals what they’re seeing, there’s some room for doubt or in your bias or some questioning round it. However to me, this footage performs like vérité. There’s no reporter on the bottom. There’s nobody influencing what’s taking place within the neighborhood, aside from the police who’re coming in and asking questions. I felt that made the footage and the story simple. Nobody may say that we had been down there asking provocative questions. And the physique digital camera footage is so extremely immersive, I needed individuals to have the expertise of what the neighborhood skilled.
How would you describe what they went via?
Their expertise felt a bit like a horror movie. You’ve gotten this lovely, numerous neighborhood dwelling along with a robust social community, taking good care of one another and one another’s children. What was so highly effective to me within the physique digital camera footage is you actually acquired to see this neighborhood as they had been earlier than [the tragedy], and also you by no means get that. There’s horrible shootings on a regular basis, and we see the aftermath, proper? We see the grieving household, we see the funeral. We now have to re-create what their lives had been like earlier than. And on this, you see this lovely neighborhood thriving and dwelling collectively, and that was so profound. I needed to rebuild their world so everybody may see the injury performed by one outlier with a gun. How she was the one one who was repeatedly calling the police and seeing threats the place there have been none.
We’re used to seeing police physique cam footage used as proof following a police brutality incident, or as leisure in true crime reveals. It’s used to inform a really completely different story in your movie.
I needed to subvert using physique cam footage. Physique digital camera footage is a violent instrument of the state. It’s typically used to criminalize us, notably individuals of colour. It’s used to dehumanize us, to surveil us, to guard the police. What I needed to do with this materials was flip that narrative and use it to humanize this neighborhood.
Why do you suppose that Susan was not seen as a menace by the police?
She’s a middle-aged white woman. She weaponized her race, her standing, and she or he stored making an attempt to weaponize the police towards the neighborhood. The truth that she was utilizing hate speech towards youngsters [she allegedly called them the N word]. She was filming them. She was throwing issues at them. She was cursing at them. However the police didn’t flag her as greater than only a nuisance. … After the third time she known as and it was unfounded and never about an precise crime, there ought to have been some measure taken to reprimand her. They didn’t inform the neighborhood that they may file prices towards her: “She’s harassing you all. She’s harassing your youngsters.” It was systemic neglect. And actually, ought to the police be a catch-all for every little thing? Most likely not. However they weren’t outfitted. They didn’t take the required steps and the worst outcomes occurred, which is that we misplaced Ajike, and Susan is in jail for the remainder of her life. I’m positive that’s not the result she needed.
There’s a second within the movie the place a policeman knocks on Susan’s sliding glass door. She doesn’t realize it’s a cop. She opens the curtain and screams at him in a terrifying, virtually demonic voice. It’s fairly a change from her nervous, genial 911 calls.
Yeah, the bounce scare. That was one of many moments the place I used to be like, “Oh, there she is.” And the 911 name, after she shot Ajike. She was hysterical. Then her voice adjustments when she says, “They hold bothering me and bothering me, and so they gained’t f— cease.” I felt my coronary heart clench, as a result of it’s like, “Oh, there she actually is.” She has this manner of going between sufferer and aggressor. Slightly Jekyll and Hyde. It’s scary.
The sufferer/aggressor dynamic is a part of what makes Stand Your Floor legal guidelines so harmful. They are often weaponized.
Stand Your Floor coverage was born in Ocala and now it’s in round 38 states, in numerous varieties. It’s a legislation that emboldens individuals to select up a gun to resolve a dispute. For those who can other-ize your neighbor to the extent of [killing] them, the query is, what else will you do? What else will we tolerate? As human beings, how we present up in our communities is a mirrored image of how we present up on the planet. This movie takes place on this tiny avenue, however it’s a microcosm of what’s taking place at present. Susan represented the risks, and that little neighborhood represented the very best of what’s below menace.
