'Trouble the Water'

St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MCT) - The most amazing film of the year introduces us to a superhero _ in a documentary about Hurricane Katrina.

Kim Roberts, aka Black Kold Madina, was an aspiring rapper in New Orleans' impoverished Lower Ninth Ward when the hurricane hit on Aug. 29, 2005. Kim and her husband, Scott, had no way to evacuate, and as the levees breached, Kim filmed the rising waters with a video camera that she had bought from a street hustler a week earlier.

Her fledgling attempt at journalism is more powerful than anything captured by the network news. The astonishing footage includes a man carrying neighbors on his back as he swims across the raging torrent and hungry families huddled in a second-story attic while water laps at the uppermost windows.

The survival story is inherently thrilling and spectacular, but after Kim meets a professional film crew at the Superdome shelter, her footage becomes the key ingredient in a poignant work of art. Documentarians Carl Deal and Tia Lessin augment Kim's video with contextual news reports, heartbreaking 911 recordings and footage of her family's odyssey in the aftermath of the flood.

Kim and Scott adopt a homeless stranger named Brian, and they shuttle between relief camps and relatives' homes throughout the South. When they return to their decimated neighborhood, Kim is overjoyed to find a waterlogged photo of her mother (who died of AIDS a decade earlier, when Kim was 13), and Scott embraces his starving dogs; but they learn that Kim's grandmother was left to die in a hospital unattended.

Such institutional neglect and outright cruelty were epidemic, as when armed soldiers at a vacant barracks turned away hundreds of displaced locals.

The eyewitness reporting, emotional honesty and shrewd juxtapositions add up to a devastating account of poverty and race in America. Yet Kim can convey the same essence in a two-minute rap about her mother's addiction and her own perseverance.

"Trouble the Water" is a crucial film, one of the best of the decade.

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TROUBLE THE WATER

4 stars

Running time: 1:33

Not rated: Contains strong language and drug references

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© 2008, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.