Trouble the Water (2008)
Elsewhere Films, Louverture Films

Description

Directed and produced by Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine producers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, Trouble the Water takes you inside Hurricane Katrina in a way never before seen on screen. The film opens the day before the storm makes landfall—just blocks away from the French Quarter but far from the New Orleans that most tourists knew. Kimberly Rivers Roberts, an aspiring rap artist, is turning her new video camera on herself and her 9th Ward neighbors trapped in the city. “It’s going to be a day to remember,” Kim declares. As the hurricane begins to rage and the floodwaters fill their world and the screen, Kim and her husband Scott continue to film their harrowing retreat to higher ground and the dramatic rescues of friends and neighbors. Lessin and Deal document the couple’s return to New Orleans, the devastation of their neighborhood and the appalling repeated failures of government. Weaving an insider’s view of Katrina with a mix of verité and in-your-face filmmaking, Trouble the Water is a redemptive tale of self-described street hustlers who become heroes—two unforgettable people who survive the storm and then seize a chance for a new beginning.

Tags

Oscar nomination, 2000s, Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, Sundance award winner

Collected reviews and ratings

10 Los Angeles Times | Kenneth Turan

“Trouble the Water,” a stirring documentary on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, is more than a keenly dramatic look at how this country treats the poor and dispossessed. It’s also a film that was hijacked by its subjects. They saw an opportunity, they took it, and the grand jury prize at Sundance was the result.
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10 Salon.com | Andrew O'Hehir

No human being I can imagine could watch "Trouble the Water" and not be overwhelmed by grief and joy, and humbled by one's sudden awareness of one's own prejudices about the lives, passions and dreams of poor people.
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10 New York Times | Manohla Dargis

Save for some righteous indignation at the close, “Trouble the Water” makes its points without didacticism, perhaps guided by the Robertses, who are interested in surviving, not grandstanding.
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10 Zoom In Online | Nathaniel

The camera and interviewing skills may be amateur but the portrait of community sure is professional. Trouble in Water paints an impressive picture of a hard knock but tight knit community in peril. Before long you’re totally drawn in to these unfamiliar lives.
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10 Cinematical | Kim Voynar

It's only January, and we aren't even past this year's Oscars yet, but I'll go out on a limb right now and say that I fully expect to see this film nominated for an Oscar next year, and if that happens, it will absolutely deserve to be there.
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10 The Guardian | Jason Solomons

Already a winner of awards from Sundance to Gotham, this terrific video diary documentary weathers the storm of Hurricane Katrina and sifts through the apocalyptic aftermath in devastated New Orleans.
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10 Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

The extraordinary documentary "Trouble the Water" had an eyewitness in the city's 9th Ward, during the hurricane [Katrina]. Her name was Kimberly Roberts [...] the eyewitness footage has a desperate urgency that surpasses any other news and doc footage I have seen.
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9.0 The Village Voice | Jim Ridley

Trouble the Water bears roughly the same relation to Spike Lee's kaleidoscopic When the Levees Broke that a talking-blues dispatch has to a David McCullough history. The topic may be the same, but the scope is personal rather than monumental. Yet by following a husband and wife from New Orleans' stricken Ninth Ward through the flood and its aftermath—most memorably in their own camcorder footage—the movie becomes an eyewitness epic of history in miniature.
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8.8 Rolling Stone | Peter Travers

Trouble the Water is a documentary, an unforgettable one. It's an account of Hurricane Katrina from the inside. Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her husband Scott Roberts were stuck in New Orleans, without the money to get out. So they stayed and helped their neighbors and shot footage of Katrina as she attacked, footage like you've never seen, jaw-dropping scenes of the city before, during and after Katrina struck.
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8.8 Film Finder | Sean P. Means

The Roberts' experiences, blended with footage of the couple's journey away from New Orleans and back, are an emotional testament to survival and hope.
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8.0 All About Jazz | Mike Scott

Built around home video shot by Kimberly Roberts as the storm approached -- and, equally, upon her indestructible spirit and cup-runneth-over charisma -- "Trouble the Water" is as authentic and as personal a peek inside Katrina as we are likely to get.
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