20-Years After Katrina, Trymaine Lee Tells The Story Of ‘Hope In High Water’

by Kandiss Edwards

August 29, 2025

Hurricane Katrina made landfall Aug. 29, 2005. Twenty years later Trymaine Lee’s new documentary tells the story of the city’s resilience.

---

Hurricane Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29, 2005. It remains one of the largest and deadliest natural disasters to hit the United States. Twenty years later, Pulitzer Prize winner Trymaine Lee continues to report on the lasting effects of the storm with his new documentary, Hope in High Water: A People’s Recovery Twenty Years After Hurricane Katrina.

Once a New Orleans resident and local reporter, Lee was in the thick of the storm. As the streets filled with water, he reported. As thousands of people were herded into the convention center and Superdome, he reported. Lee continues to tell the story of the people of the Gulf Coast 20 years later. Lee spoke withBLACK ENTERPRISEabout Hope in High Water, his forthcoming book, and the resilience of people.

BE: You first reported on Hurricane Katrina as part of the Times-Picayune newsroom. Two decades later, what struck you most when you returned to New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast?

How much progress remained? There are so many spaces in this city that have yet to be filled 20 years later. Folks are still grappling to put the pieces of their lives back together again.

What stuck with me in an even deeper way is the resolve of people, despite losing everything. Folks are finding ways to step up for their community. They find ways to heal themselves.

BE: The documentary focuses on health, education, food access, and environmental survival. Why were these particular areas chosen to frame the story of recovery? 

I think in this film, we go from birth, maternal health care, and then move through how we experience life after we’re born — through education, through policing, through the carceral system. What it means to have access to food security. And then what it means to fight and preserve land from industry and erosion, but also for the next generation, because we are deeply tied to the land. With our bare hands, our blood, our sweat, we are part of this.

So, in telling the bigger story of how Black folks, Black New Orleanians, experience all these things, it made sense to travel through those circles with people who are doing amazing, important work to help heal their communities.

BE: Which do you believe is the most immediate issue?

I really think that food security is probably one of the most pressing issues in this country, and it’s an obscenity that we have hungry children in America.

BE: This project is backed by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. What role do you think partnerships like that play in amplifying stories of resilience?
I think the best role for organizations like Kellogg and other funders in philanthropy is to resource communities and individuals who have the answers to the problems that folks are experiencing in their communities. 

Everything that we need is already inside us. There are people on the ground in communities who understand the issues intimately. So, the fact that the Kellogg Foundation pours so much money into places like New Orleans and people who have the tools to fix the problems, I think that changes everything.

BE: Land is a major theme in the documentary. Is there any specific place where reclamation is possible?
There are groups like the Mississippi Center for Justice, it was featured in Hope In High Water, who are working to help arm people with legal tools to fight for their land. 

In Mississippi, we spoke with some folks from a community called Turkey Creek, who formed this community in the aftermath of slavery. And there are still generations of folks from those original inhabitants who are still living there and committed to fighting for that land, who found novel ways, like getting their communities listed on the Historic Register, to make sure that it’s protected.

BE: Tell BE readers about your upcoming book, A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America?
Truly my life’s work. It took ten years in the making. I almost died in the writing of this book. I’m telling my family story of how gun violence has shaped our experience as a way to walk side by side and speak to how gun violence has shaped the Black American experience. And so, telling the story of this — covering centuries of how guns have shaped my own family but also Black America. It is truly my life’s work. And it’s also about love.

Hope in High Water: A People’s Recovery Twenty Years After Hurricane Katrina is available to stream on Peacock. 

RELATED CONTENT: Former New Orleans Mayor Tearfully Reflects On Hurricane Katrina 20 Years After Storm