When the nominees for the 98th Academy Awards were announced on Thursday, filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir achieved the rare feat of bagging two nominations: one for directing a documentary feature.The perfect neighbor‘, and another for the short documentary ‘The Devil Is Busy’, which he co-directed with Christalyn Hampton.
In her almost two-decade career, this is the first time that the 55-year-old Indian-born filmmaker has been nominated for an Oscar. Considered a leading voice in non-fiction cinema, Geeta began her career in editing, working with Spike Lee and Sam Pollard. Winner of two Emmy Awards for editing non-fiction shows: ‘When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts’ (2007) and ‘By the People: The Election of Barack Obama’ (2010), Geeta has subsequently directed several highly talked-about documentaries such as ‘Prison Dogs’ (co-directed with Perri Peltz) and ‘A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers’ (with Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy).
In the 1960s, his father Sharad Gandbhir emigrated from India to the United States to study chemical engineering and was later joined by his mother Lalita. Geeta, who grew up in Boston, studied visual arts with a concentration in animation at Harvard University. There, he was introduced to Lee and Pollard. Geeta’s sister, Una S Gandbhir, was appointed to the Superior Court of Anchorage, Alaska, in 2018, and her brother Ashwin Gandbhir is a filmmaker and editor.
The themes of his films are often a bold, unflinching look at systemic injustices. Described as “a devastating and aesthetically bold documentary” by Sundance Collab, ‘The Perfect Neighbor’ examines the murder of a 35-year-old black woman named Ajike Owens. When he knocked on his neighbor’s door in Ocala, Florida, his neighbor, a 58-year-old white woman named Susan Lorincz, shot him through the door.
The documentary, streaming on Netflix, primarily uses police body camera footage, tracing events from the first time Lorincz called the police to complain about Owens and her children more than a year earlier to her brutal murder. Because of Florida’s “stand your ground laws,” which allow a resident to use deadly force against another individual if he or she believes doing so will prevent bodily harm, Lorincz felt justified in shooting Owens. This also exposes the problematic gun regulations in the United States.
‘Devil is Busy,’ a short HBO original documentary adopting the cinéma vérité style, takes viewers on a daylong journey with Tracii, the determined head of security at a women’s healthcare clinic in Atlanta, Georgia, as she works to ensure the safety of women seeking abortions in the face of new restrictions and persistent protests. “The film follows the routines of staff who continue to provide a variety of medical services, including preventive exams, checkups and reproductive health care, in an environment where clinics often face daily threats of danger,” its synopsis reads.
In an interview published on the Sundance Film Festival website about ‘The Perfect Neighbor’, Geeta said: “Film is one of the most unique and technologically advanced art forms for humans to share stories… It is important to address inequality in the system to make it a more equitable and accessible medium, but it is a powerful tool to reach people around the world and build cultural bridges and a shared human narrative.”
Click here to follow Screen Digital on YouTube and stay up to date with the latest from the world of cinema.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd