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Dubai: When the 2026 Oscar nominations were announced, Geeta Gandbhir was asleep. She had been awake until 3am the night before, too anxious to rest, and had finally drifted off just before the news broke.
“Don’t judge me. I slept through the nominations,” she laughed, speaking to Reuters. “I was so anxious the night before. I planned to go to bed early and sleep well, but I was awake until three in the morning staring at the ceiling.”
She woke up to history.
Making history
Gandbhir, an Indian-American documentary filmmaker based in the United States, has become the first woman ever to receive Oscar nominations for both Best Documentary Feature and Best Documentary Short in the same year.
Her two films, The Perfect Neighbor and The Devil is Busy, are both in the running at the 98th Academy Awards on 15th March.
It is a milestone that has never been achieved before, and it happened in a year where both films were already on the Academy’s shortlist of 15 before nominations were announced. She had reason to be hopeful. She just was not expecting it to land quite like this.
The films
The Perfect Neighbor, available on Netflix, tells the story of Ajike Owens, a 35-year-old Black mother of four who was fatally shot in 2023 by her white neighbour, Susan Lorincz, in a Florida neighbourhood.
What makes the documentary particularly striking is how it is constructed almost entirely from police bodycam footage and recordings of police calls made in the lead-up to the shooting.
Lorincz, who researched Florida’s Stand Your Ground law before pulling the trigger, is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence after being convicted of manslaughter.
For Gandbhir, this was not just a news story. “Ajike was a family friend,” she said at the Oscars luncheon. “That was our connection, mine and my team’s at Message Pictures, to the case.” The film is also a family project in the most literal sense: her husband and sister-in-law are producers on it.
Speaking about the film’s deeper message, Gandbhir was direct. “The Perfect Neighbor holds a mirror up to our society. It speaks to all the ills that are coming, mostly from the top down, that are being used to divide us and to polarise us. We are being told to fear our neighbours.”
She wants audiences to walk away asking themselves what being a truly good neighbour actually looks like, and whether they are willing to be one.
The Devil is Busy, streaming on HBO Max, is a short documentary that follows a single day inside an abortion clinic in Atlanta, Georgia.
It captures the daily reality faced by staff and patients in the wake of America’s shifting reproductive rights landscape, with protesters outside and women seeking care inside. The security guard at the centre of the film, Tracii, is herself deeply religious but believes firmly in women’s right to make their own choices.
The film was co-directed with Gandbhir’s best friend from college, Christalyn Hampton, alongside Soledad O’Brien and Rose Arce.
“Both were made with so much love and attention, and also with my family,” Gandbhir said.
Who is she
Geeta Gandbhir was born in Boston in 1970 to Indian immigrant parents. Her father, Sharad, moved from India to the United States in the 1960s to pursue an engineering career. Her mother, Lalita, followed after 1965. She grew up in Boston alongside two siblings: her brother Ashwin, who is also a filmmaker, and her sister Una, who serves as a Superior Court judge in Alaska.
She is an Emmy-winning filmmaker, director, producer, and editor whose work has consistently centred on stories involving race, justice, and the lives of people who are often overlooked by mainstream media.
Pioneer in filmmaking
Documentary filmmaking does not always get the spotlight it deserves during awards season. The fact that two films by the same Indian-origin woman are both in the running this year, both dealing with urgent and deeply American stories, and both made with the kind of personal investment that is rare in any genre, makes Gandbhir’s moment at this year’s Oscars genuinely significant.
Whether either film wins on the night, she has already made history. And this time, she will probably be awake to see it.
Areeba Hashmi is a trainee at Gulf News.
