Katrina: Come Hell and High Water is a three-part Netflix documentary that revisits Hurricane Katrina twenty years on through survivors’ voices and the uncompromising vision of Spike Lee. Lyrical yet unsparing, it blends first-person testimony with archival images to interrogate trauma, inequity, and the soul of New Orleans. The series ranks No. 1 on Netflix’s TV Top 10 in the United States, underscoring the conversation it’s sparking. Here is all you need to know about the Katrina: Come Hell and High Water. Trailer at the end of this article.
Katrina: Come Hell and High Water – All you need to know
- Title: Katrina: Come Hell and High Water
- Genre: Documentary TV show
- Year of production: 2025
- Runtime: 3 episodes (approx. 1h02, 1h02, 1h28)
- Director / Creator: Geeta Gandbhir, Samantha Knowles, Spike Lee
- Main cast: Survivors and public figures including Wendell Pierce, Soledad O’Brien, Marc H. Morial
- Production: 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks; Message Pictures
Katrina: Come Hell and High Water – What is it about?
Structured in three movements, the documentary traces the storm’s approach, the collapse of basic protections, and the afterlife of a disaster that reshaped a city. The first two chapters foreground preparation, flight, and abandonment, drawing on testimony from those stranded at home, on rooftops, and inside the Superdome.
The finale—directed by Spike Lee—shifts from chronology to memory, stitching together grief, music, and ritual to ask what recovery really means. The series is less a timeline than a reckoning, attentive to the structural failures that turned a natural hazard into a man-made catastrophe.
The cast of Katrina: Come Hell and High Water
This is a chorus of real voices. Survivors such as Kimberly Rivers Roberts and poet Shelton “Shakespear” Alexander anchor the series with lived experience, while community figures like Gralen Banks embody the ordinary lives upended by the storm. Journalist Soledad O’Brien revisits her frontline reporting; former New Orleans mayors Marc H. Morial and Mitch Landrieu add civic context; retired Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré recalls the rescue operations. Actor Wendell Pierce, a son of the city, lends cultural gravitas.
At the creative core stands Spike Lee. More than the director of the culminating episode, he acts as the project’s conscience, extending a through-line from When the Levees Broke to today. His presence sharpens the film’s moral clarity and its insistence that remembrance must also be a demand for justice.
Katrina: Come Hell and High Water, What critics say
Elegiac and unflinching, the series turns oral history into cinema. The camera listens first, letting testimony shape form; when archival images arrive, they aren’t spectacle but evidence. The result is a work that dignifies individual grief while mapping a collective wound—an argument for memory as civic duty.
The finale, “God Takes Care of Fools and Babies,” is the capstone: a visual poem about mourning and persistence that reframes the city not as a backdrop but as a living character. Early critical reception has been strong across major outlets, but what lingers is the insistence that rebuilding without justice is merely redecoration.
Behind the scenes
The series reunites veterans of past Katrina storytelling—executive producers Spike Lee and Sam Pollard, producer Alisa Payne—while handing the first two chapters to Geeta Gandbhir and Samantha Knowles. The final episode’s title, “God Takes Care of Fools and Babies,” has already become shorthand among reviewers for the show’s most searing passage.
Is Katrina: Come Hell and High Water based on a true story?
Yes. The documentary is grounded in the real events of August 2005 and their long tail, drawing on survivors’ accounts and newly surfaced footage to trace how the levee failures and institutional responses shaped New Orleans for decades.
When is it available on Netflix? Release date
Available now. The docuseries premiered globally on August 27, 2025 and is streaming on Netflix in the US, UK, and other regions. Watch Katrina: Come Hell and High Water on Netflix: US / UK.
Trailer
In the meantime, let’s watch the trailer.
