Katrina 3-Year Coverage: Cinema Fridays: "It's not about a hurricane. It's about America."

Trouble the Water, directed by Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, Zeitgeist Films, Opens August 22

Being hailed by the New York Times as "one of the best American documentaries in recent memory," the film Trouble the Water opens today in theatres in Los Angeles and New York. The film won the 2008 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and it depicts the experience of 9th Ward residents trapped in New Orleans during the hurricane. Directed and produced by Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine producers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, the film is based on footage shot by Kimberly Rivers Roberts, an aspiring New Orleans rap artist, as she and her husband Scott film their harrowing retreat to higher ground and the dramatic rescues of friends and neighbors. The filmmakers document the couple's return to New Orleans, and it also reveals the devastation of their neighborhood and the repeated failures of local and national government.

"All we had been seeing in the media were images of helpless victims or of looters," producer Tia Lessin told the New York Times. "Those were the two archetypes. Kimberly and Scott were neither. They were survivors, and they were putting everything they had into protecting themselves and their community."

As the Village Voice says: "Fresh as a slap, the outrage of Katrina's mishandling comes flooding back in Trouble the Water, a documentary account so starkly surreal that at times it seems wrought from another century's folklore."



For more information visit: Trouble the Water.