When Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans on August 29, 2005, the storm ruptured the myth of American preparedness, racial equity, and government accountability. Twenty years later, the trauma remains raw for those who lived through it. In Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time, premiering July 27 on National Geographic, director Traci A. Curry revisits this national tragedy with unflinching honesty and, crucially, with the survivors at the center of the story.
Produced by Proximity Media (founded by Ryan Coogler) and the award-winning team at Lightbox, this five-part series is a necessary reckoning. Drawing on powerful testimony, searing archival footage, and 20 years of hindsight, the series peels back the glossy rhetoric that often surrounds discussions of Katrina and dares to ask: What really happened, who was left behind, and what did America choose to forget?
Ahead of the docuseries’ debut, MadameNoire had the opportunity to speak with Curry about her vision, her emotional journey, and why Katrina must be remembered not as a weather event, but a human one.
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“It wasn’t something that happened to America. It was something that happened to New Orleans.”
That distinction might seem subtle, but to Curry, it’s everything. “I think one of the first things that occurred to me is that we, meaning us America, the people that were kind of spectators to Katrina, and around the world, remember it as something that happened to America,” she told MadameNoire. “But it wasn’t something that happened to America. It was something that happened to New Orleans and these people in this particular place.”
That revelation didn’t come in the edit bay, but during quiet conversations with residents. Curry visited New Orleans before production began to listen and absorb the emotional weight of Katrina’s legacy. What she found was a city still split in two: before the storm and after. “For those of us who go to New Orleans as visitors, it feels like New Orleans always has,” she explained. “But for the people who are from there, they kind of have this bifurcated experience.”
The Truth Behind the Myth of Chaos
In mainstream memory, Hurricane Katrina is often portrayed as a story of chaos: looting, violence, and anarchy. But Race Against Time challenges that narrative head-on. Through firsthand accounts from residents, first responders, and local leaders, the series reframes those days not as a descent into lawlessness, but as a moment of resilience, community, and yes, abandonment.
From the Superdome to the Convention Center to the rooftops where families waited days for rescue, the docuseries delivers gut-punch after gut-punch. Each episode shares the lived experience of Katrina, exposing not just the floodwaters, but the institutional failures that made those waters fatal.
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