Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, this astonishingly powerful documentary tells the story of an aspiring rap artist and her streetwise husband, trapped in New Orleans by deadly floodwaters, who survive the storm and then seize a chance for a new beginning. It's a redemptive tale of self-described street hustlers who become heroes that takes you inside Hurricane Katrina in a way never before seen on screen. Trouble the Water opens the day before Katrina makes landfall, just blocks away from the French Quarter but far from the New Orleans that most tourists knew. Kimberly Rivers Roberts is turning her video camera on herself and her 9th Ward neighbors trapped in the city. 'It's going to be a day to remember,' Kim says excitedly into her new camera as the storm is brewing. It's her first time shooting video and it's rough and jumpy but dense with reality. Kim's playful home-grown newscast tone grinds against the audience's knowledge that hell is just hours away. As the hurricane begins to rage and the floodwaters fill their world and the screen, Kim and her husband Scott continue to film, documenting their harrowing voyage to higher ground and dramatic rescues of friends and neighbors. Intertwining Kim and Scott's insider's view of Katrina with a mix of verite and in-your-face filmmaking, filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin follow their story through the storm and its aftermath, and into a new life.
There have been other good films documenting the Hurricane Katrina disaster, but producer-directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal’s Trouble the Water tells the story from a point of view that’s unusual, if not unique: from the inside out. That perspective is provided by Scott and Kimberly Roberts, a young couple from New Orleans’ Ninth Ward who are the central figures in this harrowing but ultimately uplifting drama. On August 28, 2005, two days before Katrina came to town, Kimberly (also an aspiring rapper whose stage name is Black Kold Madina), started shooting footage with her own video camera. “I’m showing… that we did have a world before the storm came,” she says, and she keeps at it even as the hurricane forces her, Scott, and other family members to hole up in the attic as the rain, wind, and floodwaters take their toll (“We’re truly under siege,” Kimberly reports. “We’re barely living up here”). They eventually find temporary refuge elsewhere, but two weeks later, having lost a grandmother and an uncle in the storm, the couple returns to their neighborhood, now accompanied by professional filmmakers. The images here are striking--not just their horror at seeing what’s become of their home, but also their delight at finding a couple of their dogs still alive, or Kimberly’s joy and relief as she recovers a photo of her mother, who died of AIDS when Kim was 13. And while one can certainly sense their despair, helplessness, and resignation (the government’s appallingly slow and inept response does not go unnoticed), there’s very little anger--even when the officers at a nearby Naval base, where there’s plenty of room, turn them away--and a surprising amount of optimism. “I’m still here,” Kimberly says, “looking for a better tomorrow.” Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke remains the definitive and most comprehensive Katrina documentary, but for a more personal approach, Trouble the Water (which includes several of Roberts’ hardcore, profanity-laced raps on the soundtrack) is highly recommended. --Sam Graham
