Documentary about fatal Chicago police-involved shooting nominated for Oscar​on January 25, 2025 at 4:48 am

CHICAGO (WLS) — A short documentary about a police shooting that took the life of a Chicago man has been nominated for an Academy Award.

Some of the video included in the documentary can be disturbing.

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Chicago police shot and killed a South Side barber named Harith Augustus on July 14, 2018.

An Academy Award-nominated documentary titled “Incident” takes viewers inside the crime tape and beyond to give the audience a full account of how police react when a police-involved killing is caught on tape.

“What they gave us was everything, all the body camera footage, unedited of all the officers involved in the initial incident and the aftermath,” Jamie Kalven with The Invisible Institute.

Kalven, a journalist who broke the Laquan McDonald story, was able to get all the body cam footage through a Freedom of Information lawsuit. He teamed up with friend and filmmaker Bill Morrison to make the documentary.

“I started conceiving of a piece where you could have these different perspectives, and at the same time show Augustus’ prone body in the same frame, and how these different clips could relate,” Morrison said.

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The 30-minute short documentary is told entirely through police bodycam footage and one neighborhood surveillance camera. The first minute and a half is silent.

“I don’t want to add additional audio, I don’t want to add an additional narrator or interview footage,” Morrison said. “Let’s see how well we can tell the story just by what’s provided.”

Morrison takes the audience from the very beginning when a group of officers were on a 71st Street sidewalk as Augustus is walking home from work. They stop him because they see he is carrying a gun in his waistband. As a concealed-carry holder, Augustus complies and shows them his FOID card. Within seconds, they surround him, Augustus stumbles to the street and an officer shoots him dead.

“One of the rules I wanted to try to establish is that Augustus’ body, living or dead, is always present,” Morrison said.

Going from a single screen to various quadrants, the documentary shows the chaotic police response that followed for several minutes.

“I think there’s a we don’t maybe account enough for just sheer incompetence, bumbling incompetence, which the film displays from beginning to end,” Kalven said.

READ MORE | Chicago police officer found not liable in 2018 shooting death of barber Harith Augustus

Kalven said the documentary shows how police quickly come up with justifiable narratives and fail to investigate the shooting.

“You have a sense towards the end of the film the police know less about what happened at the beginning, it’s quite amazing,” Kalven said.

Kalven and Morrison said unfortunately the documentary could not be made today, because in the latest police union contract, there is a provision that states video recorded by body cameras following an incident can no longer be used by the public.