Movie-Trouble the Water

Trouble the Water was nominated for an Oscar as best documentary film. It did not win.

Katrina, from the perspective of a person in the eye of the storm, Trouble the Water
(2008) is harrowing in the true sense of the word. The video taken from Lower 9th Ward residents Kimberly Roberts is intense. She started keeping a video diary as Katrina started to loom as a threat to New Orleans. Calls for evacuation did not reach many residents because they did not have TV. And even if they did, how were they to evacuate?...they had no cars.

Roberts, an aspiring rapper, starts filming as people are stocking up on supplies. She is not a very good videographer, but it is visceral in its immediacy and truthfulness. We see winds picking up, rain starting and becoming incredibly intense. The house starts to flood in the rain, and then the levees fails. Rivers of water are in the street, as the family moves up into the rafters of the house. And the water continues to rise.

Trouble the Water can be intense, and evokes intense reaction. Anger that people could have been left to die so casually by all levels of government, and disgust as we see these people and this area try to recover, and see the level of incompetence as FEMA and other agencies continue to ignore their plight.

The journey taken by these people is difficult and often despairing. But it also is uplifting as they see their proximity to death, and resolve to make their own lives trues, more moral and more meaningful. Trouble the Water captures all that and more.