User reviews

"Incident", directed by Bill Morrison, is a short film that approaches violence with a disturbing urgency. Instead of exploring the aftermath of the act, Morrison goes straight to the point, using a mix of split-screen and footage captured by security cameras and bodycams to show the murder of a Black man in Chicago in 2018. Morrison's aesthetic choice to focus on the immediate and visceral creates an intense and uncomfortable experience. The audience is confronted with the rawness of the event, triggering an emotional response that mixes anger, sadness, and a sense of helplessness in the face of the explicit brutality and the institutional indifference that follows the act.

The film makes use of public archive material, a choice that not only places violence at the center of the narrative but also exposes how systems of power, like the police, often protect themselves by rationalizing and covering up what happened. The editing is one of the most powerful tools here, as Morrison manipulates time and space to amplify the audience's perception, playing with the chaos of the situation while the community around the event disintegrates into rage and indignation. What is most disturbing is that, by piecing together these fragments of footage and sounds, the film makes us feel the dehumanization of the moment, as if we are there, powerless, watching a life being taken with no purpose or justification.

"Incident" is not an easy film to watch, and that's intentional. Violence and death are depicted head-on, with no attempt to soften the impact. But it's exactly this intensity that makes the film an essential work for reflection and action. By exposing reality so directly and without adornments, Morrison forces the audience to confront the harsh truths about systemic racism and police brutality. In an age of viral videos and quick reactions, the film is a call to action, reminding us of the role of media, society, and art in shaping our perception of violence and its consequences.

Road to the Oscars 2025: This is nominated in 1 category best documentary short.

I saw this was released on YouTube under the New Yorker (a good place to check for Oscar shorts) and wanted to catch up in this category. Incident is a very important short film, highlighting a lot of problems in the US. As a non-American I can´t of course speak on behalf on what should be done about this problem since the right to bare arms is insane to me in the first place. Highlighting the insane chaos and the important of police control we are shown a shadow to incidents like these.

Through bodycam, dashboard and security Cam footage, we are reconstructed a police incident that goes horribly wrong.

This is a very confusing documentary to follow because of the graphical layout of all the screens. It is hard to follow where to look, who´s talking, where the subtitles are and so forth. It is disorienting, and it might have been the point, but if you want me to take a stand on this, show me everything in a chronological and logical way. I think the documentary is trying to be unbiased here and lets the viewer observe what they see, but at the same time the text on screen clearly already took a stand on the situation. While the layout is chaotic as the nature of the situation it doesn't really help the viewer experience.

It is an important thing to highlight and why the bodycam system might be so important. While it also has it´s biases as hearing the crowd yelling at the police, it is mostly just pure footage and audio to make you understand what happens here. It´s a good idea to do this reconstruction and really highlight how out of line the whole situation was. The ending with the police officers turning off their cams are a bit heartbreaking and seeing the sentences for this is insane.

The lack of sound is actually a bit jarring. While it wants again is trying to be objective it creates this weird silence that I am just not adjusted to while watching something.

This is an important documentary to highlight a lot of problems in the American system. Is it the guns? Is it the lose cops? Is it the monitoring? They all factors in to a situation swept under the rug.

Oscar Predictions: While I think I got more emotions out of "instruments of a beating heart"(2024) I think this is better and has a more important thing to showcase. I haven´t watched the rest yet, but see something like this take it.