The Oscar-nominated short documentary Incident begins with closed-circuit video shot from a utility pole along a Chicago street. The camera shows storefronts on one side of the road, and closer to the camera, two sets of train tracks. The scene looks placid, but within moments the camera will capture the last moments of a Black man named Harith “Snoop” Augustus, as he is shot dead by police.

The film, streaming on The New Yorker website, is made entirely from surveillance video and police body camera footage. The CCTV video seems detached, unmoved by the shocking scene it records. The body cam footage, however, jerks with panicked motions of the officers who accosted Augustus on the sidewalk, and their breathless attempts after the shooting to put their actions in the most favorable light.

“Augustus was portrayed as a perpetrator, which he wasn’t,” director Bill Morrison maintained at a Q&a held...