Neighbour

The Good Samaritan emphasizes that the true neighbour is not selected; rather, it is encountered authentically. Unlike other relationships –romantic, friend, familial– the relationship between neighbours arises not out of immediate benefit or necessity. Neighbours are forged through shared circumstance, location, and community.

The demand by Jesus in Luke 10 requires honesty with yourself –to be aware of how you can and should love– and an embrace of the other –to enact your charity and goodwill toward anyone you encounter.

The example of the Samaritan challenges the curation practices of technology, which embed a logic of preference. It perhaps could be telling us to resist the way technology frames rejection and acceptance as flippant and negotiable. From online dating applications to calendar invites, we are conditioned to normalize the dismissal of the “unwanted”. The neighbour, as given, instead presents a responsibility and demand to see others in their full humanity and cherish them as such.

In Luke, the Samaritan does not help his neighbour because they support the same sports team or work together in the same office. We actually know little about who the man is, but only that the Samaritan “took pity on him” (in the Greek it translates to ἐσπλαγχνίσθη (esplanchnisthē), meaning to feel compassion, have pity on, be moved).

The two films recommended have two different tones and encounters of neighbour: one is warm, the other is unsettling misperception. Both highlight one end of the spectrum of engagement with neighbours.

This short film follows two strangers, Amelia and Gabby, as they share a meal. Amelia is just returning home from her time spent at an inpatient center as she works through an eating disorder. Gabby acts as Amelia’s accountability and support, despite being a stranger. Dispelling the usual niceties that accompany interactions between strangers, Amelia and Gabby engage in honest dialogue about who they are and how they are doing.

Through their shared experiences of isolation, these women form a connection not because they have been matched by a curated system or because they present idealized versions of themselves, but because they meet one another in the ordinary realities of life as their raw, unfiltered selves. They were, in every sense of the word, neighbours to one another.

The 20-minute drama explores how we survey, curate, and perceive one another. Though the film does not explicitly involve the technological dimensions of these actions, it considers how perceptions of others are formed–often acting as self-projections, rather than accurate judgments.

It centers on a young family, composed of a middle-aged couple and their three children, and their new neighbours, a young, jovial couple, who move into the building directly across from their flat. With no curtains, this young couple lives their life uninhibitedly, throwing parties, having sex, and capturing what the older couple deems as the pinnacle of youth.

The film reaches its culmination when the discontented mom of the young family sees the husband of the young couple pass away. Rushing outside to find her neighbour grieving her husband’s death, the mom gives her a hug. As she does, the young widow recognizes the mom from the ‘happy family’ she and her husband would watch. While saying this, the film reveals how incomplete our perception of one another often is, even when we believe we are witnessing the most unfiltered moments of another person’s life. If we can misunderstand those who live directly across from us, how much further removed are we from truly knowing one another in an age increasingly mediated by technology? While digital platforms are frequently celebrated as tools of connection, the film raises a more unsettling question: do they actually bring us closer to others, or merely closer to our perceptions of them? As social media encourages us to curate, perform, and consume carefully constructed versions of ourselves, and as artificial intelligence increasingly mediates our interactions, the question of what it means to be genuinely with and for another person becomes increasingly obscured. By contrast, the neighbour as given compels us to move beyond self-perception and orchestration into the reality of encounter. It requires stepping through the glass, as the film suggests—leaving the safety of observation and entering the world of experience, touch, embrace, vulnerability, and grief.