Viewers of the Netflix social-justice docu The Perfecr Neighbor will know Dias from the film’s last scenes, when she emerges as the hero who will try to ensure meaning from her daughter’s death.

These are dark times for documentaries. Global streamers have shown timidity about politically charged or politically adjacent material — which means complex, relevant films don’t get financed, bought or seen.

Dias, and activist and Owens’ friend Takema Robinson, have launched an organization along with the film’s release. “That is the mission of Standing in the Gap. Through The Perfect Neighbor, we’re hoping to change Stand Your Ground laws and also hoping to raise resources to support other families impacted by racial violence in the future,” Robinson says, referring in the first instance to the controversial statutes that allow an aggressive form of self-defense and that disproportionately victimize people of color.

“We are trying to make really powerful art that moves hearts and minds toward some type of change,” she adds.

Cover-Up, Laura Poitras’ movie about the professional complexities of journalist Seymour Hersh — and the uncomplicated importance of a free press — has been making the circuit at journalism schools and other venues.

At a recent New York City gala for the Committee to Protect Journalists, Hersh and Poitras attested to the importance of protecting endangered media, which these days applies to this country almost as much as CPJ’s traditional battleground of the Global South. “If you start taking the freedom for granted, you’ve already lost it,” Hersh says.

Mariska Hargitay, who executive produced Lorena Luciano’s DOC NYC film Nuns vs. the Vatican, has just sent a long note to the Vatican with a link to the film. The movie tells of the dozens of women allegedly abused sexually and spiritually by former Jesuit priest Marko Rupnik and the Church’s alleged protection of him.

One example of a docu changing the world came 20 years ago, when An Inconvenient Truth flipped the light on climate change. So impactful was that movie that one study found that ZIP codes within 10 miles of screenings showed 50 percent increase in the purchasing of carbon offsets.

Michael Moore also mobilized activism on gun control with Bowling for Columbine.

During the first Trump administration, Congress passed the First Step Act to reform federal sentencing laws after legislators were shown The Sentence, a harrowing Sundance film about a mother of three daughters who spent years in prison owing to minor nonviolent drug-related offense.

Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman’s prison-industrial complex indictment The Alabama Solution from HBO is seeking that.

One reason these films can have an impact even as their distribution power dwindles is the quickly thinning line between activism and journalism.

Geeta Gandbhir, who directed Neighbor, is unabashedly an advocate: “I think that as an artist or filmmaker, my job is to be a vehicle. The activism is the filmmaking.”