New Orleans drowned, and America looked away.
This doc stares directly into the failure, betrayal, and resilience that followed.
Trailer for “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts”
You Can’t Make This Sh*t Up
- After the storm, bodies were left rotting in the streets for days and sometimes weeks. One scene shows a dead man slumped in a lawn chair, covered in a tarp, left outside a building as people walk by.
- People took refuge in the Superdome, where the toilets stopped working, the roof ripped apart, and 30,000 people were crammed together in sweltering heat—with barely any food or water.
Watch “When the Levees Broke”
You can stream “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” with a subscription on HBO Max, Apple TV, Hulu, or Disney+.
Find current streaming options at JustWatch.
Ratings:
- My Rating: 95/100
- IMDB Rating: 8.5/10
- Rotten Tomatoes Ratings: 96/100 (Users), 94/100 (Critics)
Director’s Note: Spike Lee directed this 255-minute epic documentary series. He followed it with “If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise,” which revisits the aftermath five years later.
Release Date: Premiered on HBO in August 2006, on the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
My Review of “When the Levees Broke”
The Setup
Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005. But the real catastrophe came after: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ levees failed catastrophically, flooding 80% of the city. Thousands fled to the Superdome, where the roof peeled off and conditions became third-world overnight.
Spike Lee interviews over 100 residents, experts, politicians, musicians, and historians. He lets the city tell its own story—and it’s heartbreaking.
More Highlights from the Doc
- One engineer admits the levees were never designed to survive a Category 5 storm—and they failed long before they should have.
- New Orleans residents talk about being treated like refugees in their own country. Many recall being labeled as “looters” for trying to get food and water.
- Mayor Ray Nagin famously loses it in a radio interview, shouting, “Get off your asses and do something!”—a rare burst of raw honesty in an otherwise tone-deaf official response.
- Terence Blanchard’s mother returned to her flooded home only to find a white “X” spray-painted on it by rescuers. The markings indicate the date the home was searched—and whether any bodies were found inside.
- The Bush administration is shown fumbling repeatedly. FEMA’s Michael Brown (“Brownie”) becomes a national punchline—and scapegoat.
- Harry Belafonte, Al Sharpton, and Cornel West draw parallels between the disaster and the long history of systemic racism in America.
Cameos
- Wynton Marsalis and Terence Blanchard (both New Orleans jazz legends) offer both emotional weight and cultural insight.
- Sean Penn is shown in an infamous attempt to rescue survivors by boat—controversial, but included here unfiltered.
- Harry Belafonte gives one of the film’s most memorable reflections on class and race in America’s disaster response.
Lesser-Known Details from the Doc
- Many deaths weren’t from the hurricane—but from dehydration, heat stroke, and untreated wounds in the days and weeks after.
- Spike Lee intercuts modern interviews with jazz funeral footage, showing the cultural heartbeat of New Orleans even in mourning.
- One evacuee recounts how buses were staged just outside the city—but FEMA wouldn’t let them in until days later due to “logistics.”
- The film shows how Katrina wasn’t just a natural disaster—it was a failure of man-made infrastructure, government response, and media narrative.
Wrap Up
“When the Levees Broke” is the most gut-wrenching indictment of modern disaster response ever filmed. It’s about a flood, and it is about abandonment.
Thanks for reading!
Heather Fenty, Guest Writer, Daily Doc