ALISA PAYNE on Producing THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR

By Rebecca Green

Alisa Payne has built a career grounded in telling stories about Black and brown communities with artfulness and innovation. From the Emmy-nominated STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING, to the Emmy nominated Disney+ series HARLEM ICE, Alisa has consistently championed work that centers marginalized voices. Her latest film, THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR, premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and became a number one hit on Netflix, defying industry assumptions.

Alisa discusses with Dear Producer the emotionally and technically challenging journey of making THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR, why she believes it’s essential viewing, and how she’s built a producing partnership with filmmakers Sam Pollard and Geeta Gandbhir that treats the company as home base. She also opens up about navigating the awards circuit, using success to open doors for others, and why sticking together as producers is essential to moving the industry forward.

When did you come onboard THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR?

I have a company, Message Picture, with Sam Pollard and Geeta Gandbhir and Geeta is the director of THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR. This story came to us very early because the subject of the film, Ajike Owens, is a family friend of Geeta’s husband Nikon Kwantu, who is also a producer on the film. Within a day of Ajike being murdered, we began documenting what was happening on the ground by filming protests and the funeral. Mostly, we were trying to get clips to send to the media because we were worried that what happened to Ajike was going to get swept under the rug. There wasn’t national coverage. At first, Susan Lorincz, the perpetrator, wasn’t arrested. We wanted to make sure that happened. It became a film two months later when the family lawyer requested the body cam footage through a Freedom of Information Act request. Once Nikon saw the footage, and that it went two years back, he said we should consider making a film. Early on, it was all about helping the family and making sure that Susan was arrested, and then later that she was convicted.

I was reading an interview with Geeta about how making this film helped her process her grief. How was that for you as the producer working with a filmmaker so close to such a traumatic situation?

Geeta and I first met as mom friends. Our families are close. When something like this happens, you galvanize. We were on the ground early. I was working on the Disney+ project HARLEM ICE, and I remember having to pause everything when I heard what happened. I remember where I was seated in my living room because it was so unbelievable. Ajike was shot through a locked door. It was devastating. Ajike is the mother of four children who will never have their mother back. It was grief work.

The film is told solely through body cam footage. Was that a choice from the beginning? How was it working with only that kind of footage?

The film is not only the most emotionally challenging film we’ve worked on, but also the most technically challenging. You see body cam footage and don’t think about the fact that it is really poor-quality, low-grade camera work. The police are walking around, so it’s bouncing all over the place. It has a small mono mic that picks up everything, including the walkie-talkie, the ground noise of walking, and every conversation and sound.

The use of body cam footage, in this case, is trying to subvert something that’s used to surveil Black and brown communities and oftentimes victimize them. In this case, we’re using it to subvert that. Through the body cam footage, you’re actually seeing this beautiful, multi-generational, multiracial community that lives together, raises their kids together, and there’s only one violent outlier.

The police body cam footage also feels undeniable. No one was directing anybody to do anything. Geeta wasn’t giving creative notes about performances. These are just people living their lives and doing their jobs. We thought that objectivity was important. There’s no redoing, no re-recording a line or changing an angle. At the end of the day, this was the best approach because we’re trying to make substantive change. We hoped that if people saw it in this way, Susan would not be let off like George Zimmerman was.

We did not re-interview the kids on the street because we didn’t want to re-traumatize them, and that was another reason for using the police body cam footage exclusively. They had already been interviewed by the police numerous times. We wanted to do this with the least harm to that community. Only one family still lives on Ajike’s street. There has been a loss of innocence for so many of those children. They witnessed murder.

I will admit that until I thought about it more deeply after watching the film, I saw the police as “good guys” compared to what we usually see in the media.

I understand why people initially don’t consider the police officers as a part of the problem because they didn’t show up with guns blazing or overtly mistreating the community. But their inaction was the problem. They should have done more with Susan in terms of consequences, rather than simply seeing her as a nuisance.

Nikon often says “we have such a low bar in America for policing of Black and brown communities that we confuse politeness with competence” or doing their primary job. They treated Susan as an annoyance, as a nuisance. But their biases towards her and her weaponizing her white privilege against the predominantly Black and brown people allowed for the worst possible outcome. Someone was killed.

Have you encountered negative feedback from police officers who have seen the film?

No negative feedback.

We premiered at Sundance 2025 and an older white gentleman who works in law enforcement approached me after the screening and validated what I’m saying. He confirmed that after three times of Susan making unsubstantiated claims, they’re supposed to either incarcerate her or fine her. She’s supposed to be on a frequent-flyer list, and they’re supposed to intervene on another level.

I’ve seen a lot of videos on TikTok about this film and a conversation about whether it’s “Black pain porn,” or essential viewing. What is your take on this?

There are a couple of things. First, we are showing a beautiful, multiracial, multi-ethnic community and what communities should be. We’re showing children playing in the street. We’re also showing children who are often adultified by the time they are 11. In fact, one of them says to a police officer, “We’re just kids.”

A lot of those critiques come from people not knowing who is at the center of the film. I was in an Uber today, and the Black female driver asked me why I was in Los Angeles. I told her I’m a producer and in LA promoting my film THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR. She turned around and started crying. She’s so happy to know that there are Black people - people of color - involved in the film.

The other part comes from their not understanding that our mission is to help the family. When Nikon thought we could turn this tragedy into a film, Geeta asked Ajike’s mother Pam if she wanted that. She prayed on it and said “yes”. Before we submitted it to Sundance, Geeta brought it to her to watch and told her we would shelf it if she wanted us to. She watched it for the first time and had a very visceral reaction. She prayed on it more, watched it again, and said she wanted the world to know what happened to her daughter, similar to Mamie Till, Emmett Till’s mother. She expressed to us that she wanted the film to help other families and communities so that nobody else has to go through what they went through.

We want this film to effectuate change. We want people to be upstanders, not bystanders, when they’re having conflicts with anyone, especially at a time when ICE is moving into neighborhoods of color and snatching people out of their beds. We’re also here for Pam’s mission. She started the Standing in the Gap Fund to help other families affected by race-based violence. With the impact campaign, they’re focusing on changing policy on Stand Your Ground laws in 5 of the 38 states it exists in. For me, it’s essential to watch because it’s so much bigger than the film.

Most importantly, we showed the film to the community itself, including Ajike’s friends before any public audience saw it. People were really emotional. It was so visceral that they were having physical reactions. Nikon and I wondered if maybe we shouldn’t put the film out there. We wondered if we re-traumatizing people? However, at the end of the screenings, all of the community members - Black, white, other - all of them sitting in the circle thanked us for making the film. They shared that while it was a hard watch, they don’t want any community to go through the same thing.

One of the best things we’re seeing online and on TikTok is that people are sharing videos of their children playing outside. As a parent, I always want my children to be in nature, doing something creative or social, rather than on a phone or a computer. I’m happy that we’re affecting that. Conversations are happening around policing and gun violence, and Stand Your Ground, and all of the things.

The film is now at the top of the Netflix chart. They Trojan horsed it by marketing it to the true crime audience, which has a loyal following. Did you have certain feelings about this approach?

We never thought about it as a true crime story, but we did want it to play like a scripted thriller. We wanted it to grip people and keep viewers dedicated to watching so they could get the full story, the full purpose of having it shown. When we brought it to Sundance, the press kept categorizing it as true crime, and Netflix talked about marketing it to the true crime audience. As filmmakers we feel it is an artful film about a crime, but we have seen how fans of true crime have come to it. It is a Trojan horse. They didn’t expect what they were getting. It was the vegetables in the ice cream. We are grateful that so many different types of people around the world have seen it.

You’re on the awards circuit now. I’d be curious to hear your take on the process and whether you see it as valuable. How do you approach it as a producer? It’s not your first rodeo, how does it feel this time around?

It is a process. You’re in it, you’re traveling and talking about your film non-stop. This film feels so near and dear to my heart and we’re thrilled for the opportunity to promote it,, but it’s also very heavy to talk about day in and day out.. When it gets hard, I look at our North Star, Ajike’s mom Pamela Dias. Everything she wants for her daughter to come out of this, we want her to have.

I want to keep it in perspective. We understand that these awards and the publicity around them allow the film to get seen even more. If our goal is to make sure as many people as possible can see it to effect change, then I’m all about it. To be included as a producer at this level feels really great. I hope more producers are included in the process, because it’s important.

In some ways the awards circuit is part of the impact campaign. You make films. You want them to be seen and well-received. You put your heart and soul into this work. You want viewers to interact with it. These milestones along the way help get more eyeballs on it, and eventually they impact the impact campaign, the policy work, and, hopefully, America. The film shows the best of America as well as the worst of America. That community is the best of us, and Susan’s actions are the worst of us. Let us not lose sight of that.

I want to switch gears away from the movie and talk about your partnership with Geeta and Sam. Unfortunately, it’s become more and more rare for producers to work with the same director repeatedly, for various opportunistic reasons. But you have built a strong relationship with Geeta and Sam to create your company. What are your tips on building and maintaining creative and business relationships?

It was my idea to start Message Pictures - our production company. I went to Geeta and told her that we all have powerful work as individuals and I feel like we could be better together and she agreed. Geeta said she and Sam had been talking about partnering forever so she asked if I would be open to including him. Sam Pollard is documentary and scripted royalty so I said “of course!”

2025 was our hard launch year. We’ve been working behind the scenes for three or four years, and we came out with KATRINA: COME HELL AND HIGH WATER. Geeta directed episode one. I was the showrunner. Sam Pollard was the executive producer. That was successful. It was the number one series on Netflix for 5 days and ranked in the top 10 internationally for 3 weeks. Then we have a short film, THE DEVIL IS BUSY, that was number one on HBO when it came out, and now we have THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR.

Partnerships can be easier if you have the hard conversations around what happens when you’re getting offered certain projects as individuals. I said this to Geeta - and I really mean this—’if there’s an offer that you can’t refuse that doesn’t involve the company, then go for it.’ But at the end of the day, we treat Message Pictures as our home base. Sam Pollard works on many projects. He’s executive producing everything for everybody. But as much as we can, we have decided that we will run everything through Message Pictures and work in partnership.

Sometimes I’m not the producer, but our company’s name is on it. Sometimes I’m an EP and Geeta and/ or Sam is directing. It’s about having flexibility as a producer, too. Obviously, directors are often the stars in the distributors’ and studios’ eyes, and producers do so much unseen creative labor. But ultimately, it’s about putting ourselves out there, actually being the people who form the entities, and making sure that it’s known from day one that no matter what happens, it’s us. A lot of directors produce, but when your job is primarily producer, you know what that means. You handle all of the business, all of the things. The directors you work with need to know that you also have their back in ways that sometimes agents and lawyers don’t.

You’ve had so much success in areas where gatekeepers tell us there’s no audience. Then you defy that with projects HARLEM ICE and THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR. How are you picking projects?

I remember when we first started Message Pictures, our old agents suggested we try to have a company serve as our parent company, maybe a pod deal. I remember in one of the meetings someone saying to us, “But are all of your stories going to be message pictures?” I was like, well, we know we can’t go with them because they don’t understand us!

Whenever we’re considering projects, it comes down to the message. Our work is really steeped in good storytelling about people of color, about women, about marginalized communities, and we have a particular focus. We want to be current and also future-thinking. If people see my resume—BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME, STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING—there’s an artfulness to these pieces. They’re not your straight-up documentaries. In Message Pictures, we came together because we wanted to be innovative. We want to tell immersive stories. That’s how we approach the POV.

We will definitely want to do some scripted projects. It’s time. We purposely made THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR the way we did so people understand what we can do in terms of making a thriller and a great narrative story. Good documentaries are narrative stories.

How are you using this moment to advance your own voice?

As a person that wasn’t always in the rooms, who wanted to be at the table all the time and couldn’t, who had to do so much work behind the scenes on projects and not always get credit, and not be able to land a big project even though I had the same qualifications as those who did. I feel like it’s really important for me at this point to capitalize on the success of Message Pictures by trying to have conversations about opening the door for more people.

We’re a small company. We really hope that our successes help producers, independent filmmakers, and documentarians get their work out and have less of a struggle, even on the promotion side. I want that, and I want to grow Message Pictures so we can give more opportunities, create jobs, and do all the things.

Our film was acquired by Netflix out of Sundance, which doesn’t happen that often nowadays. But I do have faith that we are going to rebound. I’m encouraged by so many producers who are figuring out alternative distribution. Like NO OTHER LAND having had a cross-country theater campaign and making it to the Oscars after no distributor picked up the film. I’m remaining hopeful and using these successes to help usher in a new form of what our industry is, what our relationships with distributors are, and what audiences are.

Tides turn very quickly in this business, but I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful for all independent filmmakers - in scripted and documentary. We’re having tough conversations. Sometimes I know I’ve lost out on opportunities by being forthright. As producers, it is our job to advance the work and to challenge people. You have to clear out a lot of the bureaucracy to get the work done.

Also, as producers, we need to stick together to move the industry forward and create the change we want to see. Our projects can open minds on the distributor side, open hearts and minds on the policymaker side, and the hearts and minds of viewers.