Trouble the Waters - Left Behind in New Orleans

Tia Lessin & Carl Deal's Documentary Captures the Tragedy of Katrina

Oct 4, 2009

A close look at the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina through rough footage and hard times, this is a difficult film to watch. But it is a film that needed to be made.

A hurricane is coming but you have no way to leave town; you have a few animals in your care, no children, no car, and no way out. So you decide to use your video camera and document the entire experience. But the hurricane is more than just a hurricane, because the levees break and flood the entire area. Soon your camera is recording taking the family up into the very top of the attic, trying to survive. You have to help your neighbors survive, too, so all the trapped elderly and infirm are captured for posterity too. For awhile, it appears that not even the camera will survive, but somehow, just like the residents themselves, some of it does survive.

An Intimate Portrait of Personal Loss Following Hurricane Katrina

The hurricane itself was not the main tragedy for the residents of New Orleans; it was betrayal. It was being left on rooftops with no water, no rescue, no help. It was going for shelter at a deserted military base only to be turned away. It was finding out your mother was left to die in a hospital without a chance to survive. It was seeing the suffering of your friends, neighbors, animals, people of every age. It was the feeling that the government did not care about you, would not be there for you. It was the worst natural disaster in recent memory, and it became a symbol of governmental ineptitude and callous disregard. At one point in the film, the young people start going into houses to see if anyone is alive - after two weeks, the National Guard was still not and had not been in their neighborhood.

But the devastation of their former home and neighborhood was only the beginning of this story. The displacement, lack of employment, lack of personal effects, lack of connection, funerals to attend, mud and sludge to clean up, lack of sense of home and belonging: all these were experienced by the subjects of this film, Kim and Scott Roberts. Traveling to Tennessee and then returning to the Ninth Ward, Kim goes after filming opportunities; she has been orphaned since her adolescence and hopes to find her one photo of her mother among the wreckage.

Trouble the Waters: Lessin & Deal Document Resilience and Hope

The strength and perseverance of the Roberts is part of the magic of this documentary. It is a difficult journey but their young, eager personalities help them get through. When called upon by circumstances, these two show amazing compassion and strength and a lack of bitterness, which would fairly be theirs. Although this film is difficult to watch at times due to rough footage and painful subject, the spirit of Kim Roberts shines through it all.

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