Trouble the Water

Winner of this year’s Grand Jury prize at Sundance, this debut by ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ producers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin provides essential, startling and distressing insight into what it was like to be in the eye of the Katrina storm if you were a poor, black resident of the Ninth Ward of New Orleans on Monday August 29 2005.

Covering a period of a year starting from the weekend before the hurricane, this important film comprises the camcorder footage and the brave, articulate and moving recorded meditations of aspirant rap musician Kimberly Roberts, her ex-drug-dealer husband Scott and various family and neighbours. Given the circumstances, one can forgive the shaky framing, though never the total lack of aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, city, state and national authorities and services.

Much more than a mere eyewitness account of the realities of the inundation, Deal and Lessin’s sober document captures the full force of the emotional tsunami that has swept through a community more devastated by the inherent racism of their governers than the waters that swept away 1,800 lives.