When New York filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin set out to New Orleans to document the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the late summer of 2005, little did they anticipate the force of nature they would encounter in Kimberly Rivers Roberts.

The 24-year-old Roberts wasn’t just charismatic, intelligent, and endlessly watchable, but she had also documented her family’s ordeal with her own video camera.

The scenes she shot during and after the storm make up a significant portion of Deal and Lessin’s Oscar-nominated film, Trouble the Water, which won the documentary grand jury prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and plays at the Pacific Cinémathí¨que from Wednesday (May 6) to Sunday (May 10).

Deal and Lessin, whose previous work included coproducing Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, had initially planned on documenting the experience of the Louisiana National Guardsmen, who were stationed in Iraq when the levees in their city broke.

But when the guard balked, the filmmakers moved to a Red Cross shelter and began rolling tape. That’s when aspiring rapper Roberts and her husband, Scott, walked into the frame and the filmmakers struck documentary gold.

“They [Roberts and her husband] came and they introduced themselves to us, and just started to lay out this absolutely remarkable story of their own survival,” Deal recalls in a phone conversation with the Georgia Straight from Brooklyn, New York.

 “About a week before the levees broke, she [Roberts] had bought a Sony Hi8 video camera on the street for $20,” he continues. “I’m telling you, this film should be an advertisement for Sony, because what she was able to capture, both with the sound and visuals of that terrible disaster, was just remarkable.”

The amateur footage shot by Roberts, who had never before manned a video camera, is gripping.

We see Roberts, before the hurricane’s approach, chatting with neighbours about why she and her husband won’t be evacuating: they have no vehicle, and the city hasn’t provided any public transportation out of harm’s way. We watch as the waters flood into her house, forcing her, along with family and friends she’s taken in, into the attic with little food and water. And we follow her to safety as a neighbour floats by in a rowboat and helps them to find shelter at a nearby school.

The rest of the journey undertaken by Roberts, her husband, and their friend, Brian, is documented in unflinching detail by Deal and Lessin. The filmmakers intercut the trio’s struggle to rebuild their lives with media footage that reflects the racial and class divide: as Roberts and her entourage battle to stay alive, for example, a CNN reporter investigates how Katrina will impact the price of oil.

“We tried to keep the film coming from that inside-out point of view,” Deal notes. “At the same time, we just felt it was really important to illustrate some of the disconnect that the rest of us were having with the situation—particularly with President Bush, who we show in one scene speaking directly to the people in New Orleans on television when the people in New Orleans had no television.”

The result is a compelling, thought-provoking film that serves as both an indictment of the Bush administration’s handling of the crisis and an inspiring tale of survival against all odds.

“Nobody would have wished this [Hurricane Katrina] as a good way to start all over again,” Deal reflects. “But the story that we tell in the film is about personal transformation. It is, without a doubt, the people who have been deprived and neglected who will make the most out of whatever situation they’re presented with. And Kimberly and Scott did that in dazzling fashion.”