Geeta Gandbhir interview: We don’t make art to please everyone, we make art to make a statement’

Even before the Oscar ceremony is held on March 15, Geeta Gandbhir has earned her place in the books. The 55-year-old American filmmaker is the first woman ever to receive nominations for both Best Documentary Feature and Best Documentary Short in the same year.

The Perfect Neighbor is in the running for Best Documentary Feature, while The Devil Is Busy, co-directed with Christalyn Hampton, will vie for Best Documentary Short.

Gandbhir was born in Boston into a Marathi-speaking family that immigrated to the United States in the 1960s. The Harvard University alumuna worked with Spike Lee for several years, assisting him on his features before moving to documentaries and non-fiction series for television.

Another mentor is Sam Pollard, one of the co-founders of the production company Message Pictures along with Gandbhir and Alisa Payne. Gandbhir’s upcoming projects include a biographical documentary on the actor Whoopi Goldberg.

Gandbhir’s award-winning body of work reveals a consistent focus on explorations of systemic injustice, underrepresented communities and the use of film to spark social change. All these concerns are present in The Perfect Neighbor (available on Netflix) and The Devil is Busy (out on JioHotstar).

The Perfect Neighbor is a chilling account of the murder of Ajike Owens, a Black woman in Florida, by her White neighbour Susan Lorincz. The build-up to the crime as well as its aftermath was captured on body-cam footage recorded by the local police.

The Perfect Neighbor uses the footage to tell the story of an avoidable tragedy caused by racist paranoia and the misuse of stand-your-ground laws, which allow Americans to use deadly force to defend themselves against perceived attacks.

The Devil Is Busy is a quietly devastating chronicle of the effects of the abortion debate that has convulsed America. Gandbhir and Christalyn Hampton follow employees at a women’s health centre over the course of a day. The staffers work under severe pressures – the rollback of reproductive rights, vocal protests from anti-abortion activists and the very real threat of violence.

“Justice, equity, inclusion, all those things can feel impossible to achieve, out of reach,” Gandbhir told Scroll. “I hope these films inspire people.”

Excerpts from the interview.

All nominees need to keep their winning speeches ready. What will you say if you get an Oscar – or maybe even two?

I’m working on the speeches with both my teams. The co-director of The Devil is Busy is my best friend from college. So we are very close.

We have only 45 seconds. It’s very important for us to make a statement about the social justice issues behind both films. One is about abortion access, reproductive healthcare and justice for women. The other is about the intersection of weaponised racism, manufactured fear, predatory policies like stand-your-ground and dangerous gun laws.

We’ll have a statement about those things. The rest of the time, we will be thanking everybody. If you don’t say people’s names, they get hurt.

The Perfect Neighbor has been lauded for the manner in which you repurpose as well as subvert the traditional use of bodycam footage. What prompted you to use footage recorded during the course of police work as a narrative foundation?

We didn’t really think about making a film until we got the body camera footage. I come from a scripted background. I worked in scripted for about 10-12 years before I segued into documentary filmmaking.

The footage itself, and how it plays out, is so immersive. There’s no distance for the audience or the viewer. You become a neighbour. It’s almost a full-body visceral experience of being there. That, to me, was fascinating.

It’s also sort of what films that are thrillers or horror films, like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, have tried to do. To me, what that community experienced felt like a real-life horror film.

Documentary audiences are very specific. I wanted to make something that could reach a much broader audience. We’re interested making change – that’s the goal. Using this footage to make the film felt like a way to do that.

Also, I wanted to subvert the traditional use of body camera footage, which is often a tool of surveillance for vulnerable communities and communities of colour. The police come into our communities, they do not serve us often, in fact, they do harm. The body camera footage is meant to prevent that, but it’s a double-edged sword.

But in this case, we really felt that unintentionally, the police had captured this beautiful multi-racial community as they were before. You see the children playing, this community living together, loving each other, doing everything right, being the best perfect neighbours.

You never get to see that when a crime happens to us. We are often criminalised, particularly the Black community. Our children are adultified. We are not seen as full human beings. What you see in this footage is the humanity. The police didn’t mean to capture it, but they did.

On the other hand, you see Susan, who I also believe the system completely failed, escalating. Manufactured fear, weaponised racism and lax gun laws make her incredibly dangerous. She has access to a gun like she would a toaster or an oven or a microwave. Then you also have the intersection of predatory laws like stand your ground that emboldened her to believe that she could commit this crime and claim self-defence.

Bodycam footage is hugely exploitative and voyeuristic too.

YouTube has tonnes of body camera footage. There are also shows like Cops. Back in the day, it was used to glorify what the police were doing, to dehumanise the people who were often being assaulted. This is different.

Body camera footage could not be more relevant in this country. It’s imperfect, but also critical. We have ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents roaming our streets, kidnapping people and trafficking them to essentially what are concentration camps. The powers that be have no problem twisting the truth to their benefit.

We need for people to be upstanders to document. We need everyone to record. We need all the proof and all the information we can get, so that there is some accountability.

What kind of conversations around The Perfect Neighbor have you been hearing since it was premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2025?

There’s been a huge outpouring of empathy and support for the family, which is incredibly important. You see stand your ground laws resurfacing in the news. There have been conversations about body camera footage, access to body camera footage and police accountability. That’s been heartening for us.

All the ills that are coming at us, that are being used by the powers that be to divide us are present in this film. Manufactured fear is a huge tool for an authoritarian government. If we fear our neighbours, we will be silent when they are kidnapped and trafficked. We will be quiet when war is declared and genocide occurs.

That is the whole goal of the tools that are in place, like weaponised racism, which this government is using freely.

Your other nominated film, The Devil Is Busy, is also about bearing witness.

The film is meant to be a representative of a day in the life of an abortion clinic. It’s a cinema verite style. We’re there, watching the staff go through their day, with Tracii, the security guard, at the forefront. She is on the frontline every day, opening the clinic, protecting the staff and the clients, as she calls them, and then making sure it’s clear and safe to leave. She faces dangers.

It’s an all-female run clinic, run by women of colour, mostly Black women. I thought that was incredible. Women are always at the forefront of everything – of change in society, keeping society afloat.

We were so worried for them and their safety, and they are just like, this is what we do. They are incredibly brave, fearless and inspirational day in and day out.

Nearly 25 million women have lost access to healthcare to reproductive healthcare since the Dobbs decision [which ended the constitutional right to abortion in the United States]. One of the women in the film says, we’re stuck on the A-word. There’re so many other issues at hand. We wanted to showcase what they face. The cinema verite style lent itself to that reality.

Both the nominated documentaries as well as your previous films are rooted in communities, in informal and formal networks of resistance. Is this among your motivations as a documentary filmmaker – to give ordinary people a voice?

Absolutely. Ordinary people are the real heroes and the sheroes of our world. It’s the ordinary people who make change. Like women, who keep our society afloat, who do the daily labour of building and maintaining communities, taking care of each other.

A lot of my work showcases women. Because women are the absolute foundation of our society. We’re more than 50% of the population, but the other half that spends a lot of time to suppress us. If we don’t make films about ordinary people, people of colour and women, we are invisible.

I also always hope that we inspire other people to realise what they can do. Otherwise, it feels like a Sisyphean endeavour to make change. Justice, equity, inclusion, all those things can feel impossible to achieve, out of reach. I hope these films inspire people.

The documentary has been facing serious challenges, some longstanding, such as distribution and funding. You have been making films since 2008. Has it become any easier?

It’s still an uphill task. Documentary has always been a boutique industry.

When I started, there was PBS, which aired documentaries. Then there was PBS and HBO. Then suddenly there was PBS and HBO and a bunch of streamers, and then it went away again.

We’re back in the business of documentaries as it was before, where the streamers are less. And PBS has been defunded, it has been deliberately destroyed. The challenges that remain still involve distribution.

People will get their films made by any means necessary. They shouldn’t have to. It’s not fair or sustainable, but they will. The real question is, how to get them seen. There are ways to self-distribute and people are turning to that, but it’s still very difficult.

It’s always been a challenge to be a documentary filmmaker. That’s not new. You’re the canary in the coalmine, you’re sort a social worker. The people who have incredible skills, who want to highlight these stories are underpaid and undervalued. If you get into documentary film, you have to know that.

Some of the challenges facing us, like AI, are very alarming, but that is everywhere. Social media too has taken a lot of eyes off of film. We’re competing for people’s attention. How do you get your film to stand out?

Everything is a step. We have to figure it out, we have to adjust. We also have to make rules around AI because it is so dangerous, particularly in the news and media landscape.

Filmmakers also have to decide, given the environment we live in, what is the best way to tell this specific story? Is this a film? An article? A book? A podcast? Are you the best person to tell it? Then you go from there.

Audiences respond to something they like and to something that moves them. It’s really about an emotional journey. If you can connect with audiences however you do it, that means you are successful.

You worked with Spike Lee for several years. What influence has he had on your politics and your filmmaking approach?

Spike Lee’s [production company] 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks was my training ground. I worked on a number of his scripted films.

Spike Lee is an auteur, but he’s also a revolutionary. He revolutionised Black film. He’s a fighter who constantly fought for his vision to be seen and his voice to be heard. As as an independent filmmaker, that was my model – not to shy away from things that make people uncomfortable.

We don’t make art to please everyone. We make art to make a statement. Those are the things I took from him, as well as Sam Pollard, who’s my other mentor and also my business partner today at Message Pictures along with Alisa Payne.

You were born and raised in America. What can you tell us about your Indian heritage?

My mother is from Pune. My father was born in Karwar and raised in Kolhapur. So we speak Marathi.

My father immigrated to America to study chemical engineering in the 1960s. He then brought my mother over. In the 1970s, they thought they would return to India, but it didn’t work out. There was a bit of back and forth. Instead, in the 1970s, my father ended up bringing over a large number of my family to the US.

We grew up in a household with an extended family, much like we would have been raised in India. I speak Marathi, but not too well. I was raised with my grandparents in the house, so I was very connected with the culture. My parents were very liberal, not very traditional necessarily.

Also read:

In ‘The Perfect Neighbor’, a starring role for bodycam footage