Trouble the Water

VANCOUVER PREMIERE │ January’s instalment of Doc Soup features the Vancouver premiere of Trouble the Water, winner of the 2008 Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Documentary. Directed and produced by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal (who both worked on Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11), Trouble the Water tells the story of an aspiring New Orleans rap artist and her streetwise husband coping with the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. The film opens the day before Katrina makes landfall, as Kimberly Rivers Roberts, AKA rapper Black Kold Madina, turns her video camera on herself and her 9th Ward neighbours stranded in the city. As the hurricane hits and floodwaters fill their world, Kim and husband Scott continue to film, documenting dramatic rescues and their harrowing search for higher ground. Supplementing this gripping first-person view of Katrina, directors Lessin and Deal follow Kim and Scott as they embark on a new life in the storm’s aftermath. Along the way, the filmmakers discover Kim’s talents as a musician, and capture a devastating performance that compacts the story of her life into explosive poetry. "Superb . . . one of the best American documentaries in recent memory" (New York Times). 93 mins.