Trouble the Water

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Trouble the Water

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Tia Lessin
Carl Deal
Produced by Tia Lessin
Carl Deal
Music by Davidge
Del Naja
Black Kold Madina
Cinematography PJ Raval and Kimberly Rivers Roberts
Editing by T. Woody Richman
Distributed by Zeitgeist Films
Release date(s) August 22, 2008
Running time 93 min.
Country United States
Language English

Trouble the Water is a 2009 Academy Award® nominee for Best Documentary Feature and winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and the Gotham Independent Film Award, produced and directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, producers of Fahrenheit 9/11. The film is a redemptive tale of a couple surviving failed levees, bungling bureaucrats, and their own troubled past and a portrait of a community abandoned long before Hurricane Katrina hit. Featuring music by Massive Attack, Mary Mary, Citizen Cope, John Lee Hooker, The Roots, Dr. John and Blackkoldmadina. Trouble the Water was distributed by Zeitgeist Films and premiered in New York City and Los Angeles on August 22, 2008, followed by a national release in more than 200 theaters. It had its television premiere on HBO in April 2009 and was released on DVD in August 2009.

Contents

[edit] Synopsis

Trouble the Water opens the day the filmmakers meet twenty-four year old aspiring rap artist and drug dealer Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her husband Scott at a Red Cross shelter in central Louisiana, then flashes back two weeks, with Kimberly turning her new video camera on herself and her neighbors trapped in their Ninth Ward attic as the storm rages, the levees fail and the flood waters rise.

Weaving through 15 minutes of Roberts ground zero footage shot the day before and the morning of the storm, with archival news segments, other home video, and verité footage they filmed over two years, director/producers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal document the journey of a young couple living on the margins who survive the storm and seize a chance for a new beginning.

Trouble the Water explores issues of race, class, and the role of government, issues that continue to haunt America, years after the levees failed in New Orleans.

[edit] Awards and nominations

The film was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2009. It won the Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival[1] as well as the Grand Jury Award, The Kathleen Bryan Edwards Award for Human Rights, and the Working Films Award at the 2008 Full Frame Documentary Festival, and the Special Jury Prize at the 2008 AFI/Silverdocs Festival.

The film won the Gotham Independent Film Award for best documentary and the Council on Foundation’s Henry Hampton Award. It has also been nominated for an NAACP Image award for outstanding documentary and a Producers Guild of America award.

Named best documentary of 2008 by the American Film Critics Association and the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, and came in 2nd place for the National Film Critics Circle Award.

[edit] List of Awards

[edit] Critical reception

[edit] Top ten lists

The film appeared on several critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2008.[2]

Roger Ebert and New York Times critic Manohla Dargis both included Trouble in their "best of 2008."

[edit] Reviews

"… an utterly magnificent film, one that is as hard to forget as it is to ignore. As such, it is destined to live a long life, in peoples' minds and on scholars' shelves." —Mike Scott, The Times-Pacayune

"[a] remarkable story of community resilience in the face of government indifference." —Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

"…superb…one of the best American documentaries in recent memory." —Manohla Dargis, New York Times

"Four Stars….The film is about Katrina, and even more about the human spirit. Kimberly and her husband, Scott, are the life force personified: smart, funny, undefeated, indignant, determined." —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"Trouble the Water…remains one of the most eloquent records we have of a tragedy that brought out some of the most impressively alive men and women in New Orleans." —David Denby, The New Yorker

"….amazing – truly amazing –….Their profoundly humanistic movie won the Grand Jury Prize at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, and it does something remarkable: It sells you on American resilience." —Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

"…a marvelous documentary that brings home the terror and heroism brought forth by the Katrina debacle. …Beyond the politics of the situation is the human situation, and this the filmmakers capture supremely well." —Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor

"…essential, unique viewing: a stunning experience of the hurricane and its aftermath, rooted in immediate personal response and emotions that encapsulate the full national catastrophe." —Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

"…celebrates the resiliency of the human spirit." —Miki Turner, Essence

"...Tia Lessin and Carl Deal have fashioned a deeply moving story of resilience and redemption." —Joanne Kaufman, Wall Street Journal

"Endlessly moving, artlessly magnificent." —Richard Corliss, Time

Trouble the Water was named best documentary of 2008 by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists and the African American Film Critics Association.

Rotten Tomatoes has the film rated at 97% on the Tomatometer, based on 66 reviews, with 100% of "Top Critics" positive.


[edit] References

  1. ^ "2008 Sundance Film Festival Announces Awards" (PDF). 2008-01-26. http://sundance.org/festival/press_industry/releases/pdf/2008-01-26-Awards.pdf. 
  2. ^ a b c d e f g "Metacritic: 2008 Film Critic Top Ten Lists". Metacritic. http://www.metacritic.com/film/awards/2008/toptens.shtml. Retrieved January 11, 2009. 

[edit] External links

Awards
Preceded by
Manda Bala		 Sundance Grand Jury Prize: Documentary
2008		 Succeeded by
We Live in Public
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