Trouble the Water
Encyclopedia
Trouble the Water is a 2008
documentary film
produced and directed by Tia Lessin
and Carl Deal
, producers of Fahrenheit 9/11
. Trouble the Water 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 is distributed by Zeitgeist Films
and premiered in theaters 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 and has been rebroadcast on National Geographic Channel
and Turner Classic Movies
. Trouble the Water is available on DVD.
Weaving 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 relationship of government to its citizens, issues that continue to haunt America, years after the levees failed in New Orleans.
for best informational program in 2010. It won the Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival
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 IFC Gotham 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.
Roger Ebert and New York Times critic Manohla Dargis both included Trouble in their "best of 2008."
—Richard Corliss, Time
"…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
"[a] remarkable story of community resilience in the face of government indifference."
—Kenneth Turan
, Los Angeles Times
"….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
"… 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
"…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
"...Tia Lessin and Carl Deal have fashioned a deeply moving story of resilience and redemption."
—Joanne Kaufman, Wall Street Journal
"…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
"…celebrates the resiliency of the human spirit."
—Miki Turner, Essence
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.
2008 in film
This is a list of all major films made in 2008.-Highest-grossing films:Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top grossing films that were first released in the USA in 2008...
documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
produced and directed by Tia Lessin
Tia Lessin
Tia Lessin is a New York-based documentary filmmaker. Tia is the director and producer of Trouble the Water , and producer of several of Michael Moore's films including Capitalism: A Love Story, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine.-Career:...
and Carl Deal
Carl Deal
Carl Deal is a New York–based documentary filmmaker. He is producer and director of the film Trouble the Water as well as producer for several of Michael Moore's films including Capitalism: A Love Story, Bowling for Columbine, and Fahrenheit 9/11.-Career:...
, producers of Fahrenheit 9/11
Fahrenheit 9/11
Fahrenheit 9/11 is a 2004 documentary film by American filmmaker and political commentator Michael Moore. The film takes a critical look at the presidency of George W. Bush, the War on Terror, and its coverage in the news media...
. Trouble the Water 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
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
hit, featuring music by Massive Attack, Mary Mary, Citizen Cope, John Lee Hooker, The Roots, Dr. John and Blackkoldmadina. Trouble the Water is distributed by Zeitgeist Films
Zeitgeist Films
Zeitgeist Films is an American independent film distributor based in New York City founded in 1988 by co-Presidents Nancy Gerstman and Emily Russo. Films distributed by Zeitgeist are strongly auteur-driven by directors such as Christopher Nolan, Guy Maddin, Atom Egoyan, Todd Haynes, Nuri Bilge...
and premiered in theaters in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
on August 22, 2008, followed by a national release in more than 200 theaters. It had its television premiere on HBO and has been rebroadcast on National Geographic Channel
National Geographic Channel
National Geographic Channel, also commercially abbreviated and trademarked as Nat Geo, is a subscription television channel that airs non-fiction television programs produced by the National Geographic Society. Like History and the Discovery Channel, the channel features documentaries with factual...
and Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and MGM, United Artists, RKO and Warner Bros. film libraries...
. Trouble the Water is available on DVD.
Synopsis
Trouble the Water opens the day the filmmakers meet 24-year-old aspiring rap artist and ex-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 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 relationship of government to its citizens, issues that continue to haunt America, years after the levees failed in New Orleans.
Awards and nominations
The film was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2009 and an Emmy AwardEmmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
for best informational program in 2010. It won the Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival
2008 Sundance Film Festival
The 2008 Sundance Film Festival ran from January 17, 2008 to January 27 in Park City, Utah. It was the 24th iteration of the Sundance Film Festival. The opening night film was In Bruges and the closing night film was CSNY Déjà Vu.-Films:...
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 IFC Gotham Award
Gotham Awards
The Gotham Awards is an annual ceremony of awards presented to the makers of independent films which takes place in New York City...
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.
List of Awards
- 2009 Academy Award Nominee, Best Documentary Feature
- 2009 Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Documentary
- 2009 NAACP Image Award Nominee, Outstanding Documentary
- 2009 Producers Guild of America For Feature Documentary (Nominated)
- 2008 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize
- 2008 Full Frame Documentary Festival Grand Jury Prize
- 2008 AFI/Silverdocs Special Jury Prize
- 2008 Council On Foundations Henry Hampton Award for Excellence In Film And Digital Media
- 2008 Working Films Award
- 2008 Kathleen Bryan Human Rights Award
- 2010 Harry Chapin Media Award
- Official Selection, 2008 New Directors/New Films (Museum of Modern Art And Film Society of Lincoln Center)
Top ten lists
The film appeared on several critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2008.- 7th - Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment WeeklyEntertainment WeeklyEntertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
- 8th - David DenbyDavid Denby (film critic)David Denby is an American journalist, best known as a film critic for The New Yorker magazine.-Background and education:Denby grew up in New York City. He received a B.A...
, The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast... - 8th - Kenneth TuranKenneth TuranKenneth Turan is an American film critic and Lecturer in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California.-Background:...
, Los Angeles TimesLos Angeles TimesThe Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
(six-way tie) - 8th - Stephanie Zacharek, SalonSalon.comSalon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...
- 10th - David EdelsteinDavid EdelsteinDavid Edelstein is the chief film critic for New York Magazine, as well as the film critic for NPR's Fresh Air and CBS Sunday Morning. He lives in Brooklyn, New York....
, New York magazineNew York (magazine)New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New... - 10th - Josh Rosenblatt, The Austin Chronicle
- Jim Ridley, The Village VoiceThe Village VoiceThe Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
- Mike Scott, New Orleans Times Picayune
- Eugene Hernandez, IndiewireIndieWireindieWIRE is a daily news site for the independent film community. It covers indie, documentary and foreign language films, as well industry news, film festival reports, filmmaker interviews and movie reviews...
- Scott Mccauley, Filmmaker
- Washington City PaperWashington City PaperThe Washington City Paper is a U.S. alternative weekly newspaper serving the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.Founded in 1981, and published for its first year under the masthead 1981, taking the City Paper name in volume 2, by Russ Smith, it shared ownership with the Chicago Reader from 1982...
Roger Ebert and New York Times critic Manohla Dargis both included Trouble in their "best of 2008."
Reviews
"Endlessly moving, artlessly magnificent."—Richard Corliss, Time
"…superb…one of the best American documentaries in recent memory."
—Manohla Dargis
Manohla Dargis
Manohla Dargis is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with A.O. Scott. She was formerly a chief film critic for the Los Angeles Times, the film editor at the LA Weekly, and a film critic at The Village Voice. She has written for a variety of publications, including Film Comment and...
, 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
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
, Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
"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
David Denby (film critic)
David Denby is an American journalist, best known as a film critic for The New Yorker magazine.-Background and education:Denby grew up in New York City. He received a B.A...
, The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
"[a] remarkable story of community resilience in the face of government indifference."
—Kenneth Turan
Kenneth Turan
Kenneth Turan is an American film critic and Lecturer in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California.-Background:...
, Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
"….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
Michael Phillips (critic)
Michael Phillips is a film critic for the Chicago Tribune newspaper. Previously he was the drama critic of the Tribune; the Los Angeles Times; the St. Paul Pioneer Press; the San Diego Union-Tribune; and the Dallas Times Herald....
, Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
"… 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
"…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
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
"...Tia Lessin and Carl Deal have fashioned a deeply moving story of resilience and redemption."
—Joanne Kaufman, Wall Street Journal
"…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
"…celebrates the resiliency of the human spirit."
—Miki Turner, Essence
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
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
has the film rated at 97% on the Tomatometer, based on 66 reviews, with 100% of "Top Critics" positive.