As a “documentary nerd”, I was extremely excited to watch the film Trouble the Water at USF's Human Rights Film 2008 film festival. Trouble the Water follows a lower class New Orleans couple, Kim and Scott, through their horrific experience of Hurricane Katrina. The filmmakers, Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, ingeniously incorporate Kim and Scott's own home footage of the hurricane, including scenes of being trapped in the attic of their house with five young children, watching the water rising. These scenes are easily the most compelling, scary, and heartbreaking of the entire film, especially when coupled with audio clips of 911 distress calls, such as this one:
911 operator: I'm sorry, but the police are not not sending any emergency units out until the weather gets better.
Caller: So I'm going to die?
-silence-
Caller: Hello?
911 operator: -pause- yeah?
It is impossible to fathom what it would be like to be one of the callers or the people who had to take them, but Trouble the Water does the best job possible. Kim and Scott are extremely likable and charismatic (Kim refers to Katrina as a “bad chick”) protagonists – both are self declared “thugs” who once used and sold drugs on the street, only to become undeniable heroes for the people in their neighborhood. The film takes us full circle, keeping up with Kim and Scott six months after the storm, and then another six months after that, when they had finally moved back to their old neighborhood. The audience laughed at Kim's banter throughout the ninety minutes, gasped at footage of dead animals, and shook their head in shame at the clips of President Bush'. Thousands of miles away in San Francisco, everyone watching was able to experience the Hurricane Katrina tragedy truly through the eyes of the victims.
To learn more about Trouble the Water, visit the film's website.
