This remarkable documentary provides a compelling, first-person, moment-by-moment oral history of how one New Orleans family survived Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest, and certainly the costliest, hurricanes in American history. When the city's levees were breached, 80% of the city was flooded, resulting in the death by drowning or the disappearance of several thousand residents.

In ROBERT, MARY AND KATRINA, husband and wife Robert and Mary Manuel, aged 72 and 70, respectively, relate details of their harrowing experience. As the water rapidly rose, and after placing five futile calls to 911, the couple, their daughter, sons, and three infant grandchildren, ascended a ladder through the ceiling of their home and for more than a day perched precariously on its wooden frame. They were eventually rescued by boat and deposited on a highway overpass, and later taken by helicopter to a bus, which took them out of the city.

Some days later, safe in their shelter 80 miles north of New Orleans, this loving, long-married couple, in an extended, emotionally animated conversation, discuss their frightening brush with death. Even though their children have been dispersed to other states, Robert and Mary can safely laugh about their experience now, and their account is often laced with humour and repeated expressions of gratefulness to all those who helped in their rescue.

Today, long after the hurricane and the subsidence of the flood waters in New Orleans, Katrina continues to generate debate about the racial and economic divisions that plague the United States. As Robert notes at one point, "The storm has a tendency to divide this country." ROBERT, MARY AND KATRINA, although just one story out of thousands from New Orleans, serves to personalize the human toll of this natural disaster and the failure of our government to adequately respond to either the storm's expected arrival or its devastating aftermath.