Who will be able to use the concept of “resilience”? Survivors? A mental health expert? Who wants to celebrate it but move on from what required that fortitude in the first place?
Director Edward Buckles Jr. directed his first film, an exposé documentary, featuring black people — some toddlers, others in their early teens — who were children when Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. In “Katrina Babies,” she clearly points out these tensions. Ruined New Orleans. “Everyone seems to have moved on since the storm,” he says Buckles Jr. “In America, especially in times of disaster, black children are unthinkable.”
The director, who is also credited as a writer, knows the subject matter from his own experience. When he was 13, he and his family were evacuated from the city before a storm came and the embankment burst.
“Katrina Babies” is very personal, thoughtful and political. The filmmaker recounts the joys of family with cousins before the hurricane. He and his subjects are also grappling with the economic and racial inequalities exposed and exacerbated by the disaster.
Buckles Jr.’s cousins — whom he celebrates with evocative mixed-media animation (by Antoni Sendra) and later thoughtful interviews — didn’t come out at the time. And when they left, they didn’t come back. So if you’ve detected layers of survivor guilt in Buckles Jr., you might be right.
But ‘Katrina Babies’ is also the intimate work of a local son to create a healing space. If the grief (and relief) expressed in his interviews is any measure, Buckles Jr. knows how to listen to people who are tragically similar but not the same as his own experiences. . He pulls off this dance of self-awareness and empathy with impressive humility.
Katrina Babies
Unrated. Running time: 1 hour 19 minutes. Watch it on the HBO platform.