A woman confronts her moral obligation to a stranger when she overhears a domestic dispute next door and is compelled to intervene.

Director’s Vision for ‘Neighbor’

After living in New York City for five years, I started to experience the loneliness people often describe when living in dense cities. I would look at the faces of the strangers on the street and on the subway; many of them in dire situations and in need of help. And I would wonder, how do we become indifferent to the struggles of the people around us? What is our moral obligation to each other? Writing and directing this film was a way for me to explore this question.

Neighbor is a story of a bystander. It is the experience of witnessing an argument on the street or hearing something concerning next door and wondering what to do. Should you try help? How do you help? Do they even want help? What if you’ve misjudged the situation? I wanted to depict someone navigating these questions in real time and invite the audience to consider what they would do if they were in the same situation. Now that the film is done, I have discovered the answer is complicated and a little different for everyone.