Saying that out loud seemed to take even Mr. McCray by surprise, a sudden tolling of what he lost. Words thickened in his mouth. On either side of him, two of the other men, Kevin Richardson and Yusef Salaam, squeezed his shoulders and patted his back.

The film lays out the intricacies of the case, the sights and sounds of a brittle era; it will be full of revelations for those who never knew about the crime and how its life-bending effects were multiplied as the wrong people were prosecuted while the right man continued to maim, murder and rape on the Upper East Side.

The filmmakers follow the story far beyond the procedural failures identified by journalists interviewed in the film, including me. Kharey Wise, by far the scrawniest of the group, happened to be the only one old enough to spend all his time in adult jail and prison. Raymond Santana said he cursed God and lost his faith.

With Mr. McCray, they tunnel into Shakespearean territory.

“I thought he was like a superhero,” Mr. McCray said of his father, Bobby. “He coached all of my Little League teams. He was a great teacher.”

By the time of the trial, though, the man Mr. McCray had idolized had abandoned him and his mother.

“I couldn’t understand,” he said. “And I just, I hated him after that. Me and my mother started going to court by ourself. Demonstrators, you know people just shouting, you know, ‘Rapist!’ ‘You animal!’ ‘You don’t deserve to be alive.’ It just felt like the whole world hated us.”

His parents reconciled, but when Mr. McCray came home from prison, he would not accept his father’s apologies, even as his father grew ill and died.