Trouble the Water

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

If possible, Roberts' movie-within-a-movie is even more amazing than it sounds. She captures a tale of courage, heroism and tragedy more thrilling than any Hollywood spectacle.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Essential, unique viewing.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

A marvelous documentary that brings home the terror and heroism brought forth by the Katrina debacle.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Trouble the Water is so much better and truer and deeper and more illuminating than either of them ("Bowling for Columbine"/"Fahrenheit 9/11").

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The documentary shows outrageous behavior, none more so than when they and many others are directed to a nearby Navy base for refuge.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

It's a damning indictment of a national disgrace, but it also reveals the incredible faith and resilience of people who have nothing to rely on but themselves.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Enraging and inspiring. It boasts the miraculous quality of finding a letter in a bottle and discovering that its authors are alive.

Wall Street Journal Joanne Kaufman

A deeply moving story of resilience and redemption.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Lessin and Deal have made Trouble the Water a spellbinder you do not want to miss.

Premiere Pauline Pechin

A remarkable and disturbing look at the personal stories glossed over by the headlines.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Slowly builds power to devastating effect.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

They have created an ingeniously fluid narrative structure that, when combined with Ms. Roberts’s visuals, news material and their own original 16-millimeter film footage, ebbs and flows like great drama.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

A stirring documentary.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

You can't make this stuff up. You can, however, capture it on film for all time. Trouble the Water is ineradicably moving.

The New Yorker David Denby

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.

Village Voice Jim Ridley

The resilience of the movie's subjects--survivors of street crime and drugs and HIV--irradiates Trouble the Water like sunshine.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

The Roberts are unforgettable figures, and their insiders' perspective and ultimate survival and rebirth provide an exhilarating example of how wondrous things can emerge from the flood.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

The film works as well as it does thanks to Kimberly Roberts' magnetic screen presence.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Spike Lee's voluminous "When the Levees Broke" proved a thorough indictment, a compilation of tragic and appalling facts encyclopedically catalogued. By contrast, Trouble the Water (on Oscar's short-list in the best doc category) has a more personal focus and, although just as damning, manages to strike a more hopeful chord.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Engrossing documentary.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

Trouble The Water is infuriating in its depiction of helpless Americans getting left behind, and uplifting in the way it shows the Roberts putting their lives together, but it's also frustrating, because it lacks some focus.

The Hollywood Reporter Justin Lowe

Kimberly's ground-zero home video of the storm is what really makes the film exceptional, although much of it is of such rough quality and execution that it struggles to hold up on the big screen.

Washington Post Neely Tucker

Weaker in its second half than its mesmerizing first, as the story moves away from the intensity of the storm to follow the Robertses in their efforts to resettle.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The film is so immersed in Roberts's life that it becomes easy to think that most of what the camera sees is also from her perspective. It's actually too seamless.

Variety Robert Koehler

Though tinged with the sheer gumption and personal resolve of amateur vidmaker and would-be rapper Kimberly Roberts, this is ultimately a minor doc contribution to the bulging library of Katrina-related films and TV reports.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

Filmmakers Tia Lessin and Carl Deal utilize the footage Kim and Scott Roberts had taken throughout the disaster, showing how residents suffered, survived and came together to help when official assistance let them down.