‘Perfect Neighbors’ Team Wins Best Document Award at 2026 Indie Spirits

Truth is always more powerful than fiction. perfect neighbor team of directors Gita Gandbir and producer Alyssa Payne, nikon tube and Sam Bisbee It won the Independent’s Best Documentary Award in 2026. spirit awards On Sunday.

Addressing the press backstage, Gandbhir continued his impassioned speech onstage to talk more about the documented political injustices associated with recent ICE operations under the Trump administration. “When the United States and ICE kidnap our neighbors off the streets and put them in concentration camps, it’s akin to concentration camps,” she said. “I am a proud child of immigrants, just like Alisa Payne and basically anyone else who is not native to this country. We believe immigrants are the foundation of this country. Ours is the American dream and we are not going anywhere.”

that netflix The documentary examines a shocking crime that occurred in Ocala, Florida in 2023. The 35-year-old mother of four black women, Ajike Owens, was shot dead by her neighbor, a 58-year-old white woman named Susan Lorincz (Lorincz later tried to use Florida’s infamous position as a basis for her defense).

Gandbhir tells the story almost entirely through police bodycam and dashcam footage. In response to the recent protest deaths of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, 37, in Minnesota, Gandbhir said: “The importance of body camera footage is so huge. It is so important because of the counter-narratives that are happening again at the government level and the lack of accountability and freedom to distort the truth. Even though body camera footage can be a form of surveillance on vulnerable communities of color, it has also been used to criminalize it, and we have seen this. There have been multiple murders in Minneapolis.” she said

Kwantu highlighted the difficulty of carrying out a project in a fair way that gets the truth out of everyone involved. “The body camera footage is really interesting because when we got it, there was so much footage, and we really wanted to be able to tell the story in its truest form. We had over 30 hours of footage, and we had to condense it into 96 minutes, but still be able to tell what happened and determine what the truth actually is,” he said. “We could always talk about this and do interviews and give people a certain perspective, but we wanted Ajike (Owens), Susan Lorincz) and the community to tell their stories in their own words.”

Gandbhir further explained the importance of the documentary ahead of the next Oscars ceremony in 2026, adding: “It’s important to note that when people of color are killed in this way, they are often criminalized. We felt the use of body camera footage in (our film) was undeniable. You saw the community before, you saw this multiracial, multi-generational community before, and then you saw the actions of this violent idealist who transformed the neighborhood, and then you saw this beautiful young man. The fact that a mother lost her four children cannot be ignored, no matter how hard people try to deny it.”