'There's New Orleans before and after': revisiting Hurricane Katrina in a new docuseries [View all]

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/jul/27/hurricane-katrina-race-against-time-national-geographic-docuseries

‘There’s New Orleans before and after’: revisiting Hurricane Katrina in a new docuseries

With the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaching, a powerful five-part docuseries, produced by Ryan Coogler, takes a look back at the many lives affected

Andrew Lawrence
Sun 27 Jul 2025 05.00 EDT

Earlier this year, NFL fans from across the country descended on New Orleans for the Super Bowl. But even as the Big Easy rushed to put its best face forward for the big game and quickly turn the page from a New Year’s Eve attack on its famed tourist district, there was no way of concealing the derelict homes, watermarked buildings and other ravages of Hurricane Katrina. “On the surface, New Orleans is still the New Orleans of our imagination, where there’s Bourbon Street, the French Quarter and you’re drinking in the middle of the day outside,” says the Oscar-nominated director Traci A Curry. “But for the people of this place, the people who know it, there’s New Orleans before Katrina and after Katrina. A lot of us who experienced it as spectators think of it as something that happened to America – and it wasn’t.”

Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time review – a gripping, epic look at the New Orleans tragedy 20 years on
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Curry’s solo directorial debut, Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time, re-examines the epic storm 20 years later. The five-part series, which was made for National Geographic and counts Ryan and Zinzi Coogler and Alexis Ohanian as producers, isn’t a requiem in the vein of When the Levees Broke – Spike Lee’s superlative series that was just one of many works that informed this project – Curry says. Rather, it’s a tragedy thriller told through forensic analysis. The biggest jump scares come in the hindsight revelations. The first episode provides a refresher on Hurricane Pam – the multi-agency, worst-case scenario planning exercise that was conducted a year before Katrina and essentially predicted everything that would happen, down to the reports of violence breaking out across the city.

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Trailer at link

Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time premieres on 27 July on National Geographic and will be available on Disney+ and Hulu afterward