Trouble the Water

About me:

Oscar® nominee for Best Documentary Feature, this astonishingly powerful film takes you inside Hurricane Katrina in a way never before seen on screen. The day before the storm makes landfall, 24-year old aspiring rap artist Kimberly Roberts turns a hi-8 video camera on herself, her husband Scott and their neighbors stranded in New Orleans. “It’s going to be a day to remember,” she says as the winds howl; with no means to evacuate, she records their harrowing ordeal when the nearby levee fails and deadly floodwaters engulf their home and community. Directors/producers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal (producers of Fahrenheit 9/11) open the film with this chilling footage, and follow the couple’s two-year journey as they face armed soldiers, bungling bureaucrats, and an uncertain future. Trouble the Water tells a redemptive tale of self-described street hustlers who become heroes — two unforgettable people who survive the disaster and then seize a chance for a new beginning.

Trouble the Water was named best documentary of 2008 by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists and the African American Film Critics Association. And it was listed on many critics 2008 top ten films lists -- in the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, Salon.com, Entertainment Weekly, The Village Voice, Times Picayune and New York magazine among other publications. Roger Ebert and Manohla Dargis both included Trouble the Water in their "best of 2008" lists.

Here is a selection of what critics have said:

“… an utterly magnificent film, one that is as hard to forget as it is to ignore. As such, it is destined to live a long life, in peoples' minds and on scholars' shelves.”
—Mike Scott, The Times-Picayune

“[a] remarkable story of community resilience in the face of government indifference.”
—Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

“…superb…one of the best American documentaries in recent memory.”
—Manohla Dargis, New York Times

“Four Stars….The film is about Katrina, and even more about the human spirit. Kimberly and her husband, Scott, are the life force personified: smart, funny, undefeated, indignant, determined.”
—Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

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