​​​About the film

​(United States, 2023, 30 minutes, color) Directed by Bill Morrison.

​Nominated for a 2025 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short, "Incident" is a groundbreaking nonfiction film that attempts to reconstruct the disputed events of a 2018 police shooting using a collection of body camera and surveillance camera footage.

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From The New Yorker:  

"The opening of Bill Morrison’s short film “Incident” is silent. Security footage shows a section of a Chicago street on what looks to be an ordinary summer afternoon. A few people walk down the sidewalk, a seagull flies past the camera, a police cruiser idles on the corner. Suddenly the view changes and the sound comes on. The effect is jarring, and the new scene is one that has become all too familiar: police officers have shot and killed a Black civilian.

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A striking, troubling element of “Incident” comes when we see the police officers immediately begin to describe the shooting to one another—in an account that contradicts what we see on tape. For Bill Morrison, this is at the crux of the film: “With the public’s access to this footage established, a shift in police behavior happens. The cops are all performing now. They know that they’re on camera and that it’s going to be reviewed, and they are creating a narrative to vindicate their actions.”