Director Geeta Gandbhir already has Emmy and Peabody awards to her name. Now the Academy Awards have come calling—in historic fashion. Gandbhir is the first woman ever nominated in both documentary categories in the same year.
The Devil Is Busy, co-directed with Christalyn Hampton and streaming on HBO Max, is nominated for Best Documentary Short Film. The film follows Tracii, a security guard at a women’s healthcare clinic in Atlanta, as she navigates the volatile aftermath of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade—capturing, the human cost of a political decision still reverberating nationwide.
The Perfect Neighbor, nominated for Best Documentary Feature and streaming on Netflix, embeds viewers within a Florida community where a dispute over children at play escalates into tragedy, intersecting with racism and the state’s lax gun and “stand your ground” laws. At its center is the killing of Ajike Owens, a 35-year-old mother defending her children.
Groundbreaking in both form and urgency, The Perfect Neighbor is constructed, primarily from police-obtained body camera footage—placing viewers inside the mechanics, and failings, of a system as it unfolds in real time. The effect is devastating. By refusing distance and narration, Gandbhir forces the audience to confront not just what happened to Owens, but how it happened—and why the structures that enabled it remain firmly in place.
Owens was a family friend of Gandbhir’s. When she was killed, the filmmaker jumped in to help the only way she knew how—help spread the word—about Owens’ killing, the case that followed, the systemic racism that gave way to the violence, about the kind and selfless mother Ajike Owens was for her four children.
In conversation with InSession Film awards editor Shadan Larki, Gandbhir discusses sharing Ajike Owens’ story—one now known across the world, and using her camera to help make sense of a world that seems senseless and cruel—most often to those who are most vulnerable. Still, Gandbhir’s dedication to social justice and to telling the stories of those who fighting on the frontlines—for decency and for the future, offers hope. And positions Gandbhir as one of our foremost nonfiction filmmakers working today—one finally receiving long-overdue recognition.
