Documentary Review: Hope in High Water explores the fight to rebuild communities that refused to be erased

What do you do with a city where a child born in one neighborhood can expect to live twenty-five years less than a child born across town? What do you do with a city whose very infrastructure was designed to divide, to flood, to ruin? What do you do with a city that seems to tell you every day that you are not wanted?

“Hope in High Water: A People’s Recovery Twenty Years After Hurricane Katrina” explores these questions and experiences of the residents in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast after Katrina. Produced by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Trymaine Lee, who often grounds his work in material realities, Hope in High Water examines not only the storm itself but also the interconnected struggles of health, education, food justice, and environmental resilience in New Orleans.

Nearly twenty years after Katrina roared ashore, the story of the storm and how it affected New Orleans can be told in many ways, but the most inspiring is the long, often overlooked journey of recovery led by grassroots leaders, neighbors, and families who refused to let their communities disappear.

One of the voices, for instance, in Hope in High Water is Jonshell Johnson, who grew up in New Orleans and now works at “Grow Dat Youth Farm.”

https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2025/09/documentary-review-hope-in-high-water-explores-the-fight-to-rebuild-communities-that-refused-to-be-erased.html