Indian American Geeta Gandbhir Makes History With Dual Oscar Nominations for Documentary Excellence

Indian-American filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir achieved a historic milestone on Wednesday, January 22, 2026, receiving two Academy Award nominations at the 98th Oscars—a rare feat that underscores her emergence as one of documentary cinema’s most compelling voices. According to the official Academy of Motion Picture Arts, Gandbhir earned nominations for both Best Documentary Feature for “The Perfect Neighbor” and Best Documentary Short for “The Devil Is Busy.” The dual nominations place Gandbhir among a select group of filmmakers nominated in multiple documentary categories in the same year. The 98th Academy Awards will take place on Sunday, March 15, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

A Family Story Transformed Into Art

“The Perfect Neighbor,” Gandbhir’s feature-length documentary, represents both a professional achievement and deeply personal journey. The film examines the June 2, 2023, killing of Ajike “AJ” Shantrell Owens, a 35-year-old Black mother of four who was shot and killed by her white neighbor, Susan Lorincz, in Ocala, Florida. The case became a flashpoint for debates about Florida’s controversial “stand your ground” laws and systemic racism.

The victim, Ajike Owens, was the best friend of director Geeta Gandbhir’s sister-in-law. In an interview with Film Comment, Gandbhir stated: “I do not think of this film as true crime. This is a story that happened to my family, and I made it to mitigate grief.”

In an interview with NPR, Gandbhir elaborated on the personal connection: “Ajike Owens was a family friend, and originally, we did not plan to make a film. We were assisting the family with getting media coverage for the case.”

The decision to make the film came after Gandbhir and her partner, producer Nikon Kwantu, received police body camera footage obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by attorneys Benjamin Crump and Anthony Thomas. According to Netflix, “The Perfect Neighbor is a deeply personal project, created to transform grief into purpose and honor the lasting legacy of Ajike Owens and her family,” Gandbhir said.

An Innovative Approach to Documentary Storytelling

What distinguishes “The Perfect Neighbor” is its radical formal approach. The 96-minute film is constructed almost entirely from police body camera and dashboard camera footage, creating an immersive, real-time experience that subverts the typical use of surveillance technology.

According to Deadline, executive producer Sam Pollard praised this innovative technique: “Geeta and Viri [Viridiana Lieberman, the editor] and the team have done something with archival footage, with this body cam footage, that made it so immersive that it’ll challenge all of us as filmmakers now in how to deal with this type of material,” he observed. “And that’s what makes it so unique and so special.”

The film follows the escalating conflict between Owens and Lorincz over 16 months, beginning with seemingly trivial neighborhood disputes—children’s roller skates, complaints about noise—and culminating in Owens’ death. The film explores disputes leading up to the shooting by using bodycam footage. It includes footage from a selection of the multiple times that deputies from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office responded to: calls from Lorincz in 2022 and 2023, revealing a pattern of harassment and escalating hostility.

“The Perfect Neighbor” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2025, where it won the U.S. Documentary Directing Award. Netflix acquired the film for approximately $5 million and released it in October 2025 to critical acclaim and awards season buzz. The film also received a Special Jury Award at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

“The Devil Is Busy”: Courage at the Frontlines

Gandbhir’s second nominated film, “The Devil Is Busy,” co-directed with Christalyn Hampton, offers an intimate 31-minute portrait of reproductive healthcare in post-Roe America. The documentary follows Tracii, the head of security at the Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta, Georgia, through a single day as she works to protect patients and staff amid restrictive abortion laws and relentless protesters.

The 31-minute film follows Tracii, the head of security at a women’s healthcare clinic in Atlanta, Georgia, over the course of a day as she works to ensure the safety of patients and staff amid tighter abortion restrictions and persistent protests.

The film’s title comes from Tracii herself. According to Short Stuff, Gandbhir explains: “She is a deeply Christian woman practising the same faith that the protesters outside are weaponising against women. But she has chosen a totally different take on it, and it offers a different perspective on abortion and women’s health care. I think when we are living in a time where women are under siege as far as our rights, our status in society, and religion is the tool that is being used to attack us, people like Tracii are, in many ways, the antidote.”

“The Devil Is Busy” premiered on HBO on September 23, 2025, executive produced by award-winning journalist Soledad O’Brien. The film has screened at numerous festivals including DOC NYC, the Brooklyn Film Festival, and the American Documentary Film Festival.

A Distinguished Career in Documentary

Gandbhir’s dual nominations represent the culmination of a distinguished career spanning more than two decades. Gandbhir grew up in the Boston area. Her father Sharad immigrated from India to the U.S. in the 1960s to study chemical engineering and her mother Lalita joined him, with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

Gandbhir attended Harvard University to study visual art with a focus on animation. At the school, she was introduced to Spike Lee, who was teaching there, and an editor for Lee, Sam Pollard. These mentors would shape her career trajectory.

Gandbhir began her career working on narrative films with renowned directors including Spike Lee, the Coen Brothers, and Robert Altman before transitioning to documentary filmmaking. According to Business Standard, she has built a distinguished career in documentary filmmaking over nearly two decades, earning multiple Emmy and Peabody Awards along the way.

Her previous work includes editing films that have been nominated twice for the Academy Award, winning once. She was a part of the filmmaking team of the PBS film series Asian Americans which won a 2020 Peabody Award. Her short film from the HBO series “Through Our Eyes: Apart” won a 2022 Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Documentary.

Other notable projects include directing “I Am Evidence” (2017), which exposed systemic delays in processing untested rape kits across the United States and won a 2019 DuPont Award; “Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power” (2022), which won industry accolades and multiple Emmy nominations; and the series “Born in Synanon” for Paramount+ in 2023. She also directed and show-ran “Black and Missing” for HBO, which won a 2022 NAACP Award for Best Directing, a 2022 Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Series, and a 2022 ATAS Honors Award.

Her 2020 short film “Call Center Blues” was shortlisted for the 2021 Academy Awards, demonstrating her previous recognition by the Academy.

This story was aggregated by AI from several news reports and edited by American Kahani’s News Desk.