Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time

Director Traci A. Curry (“Attica”) necessarily repeats many of Lee’s incidents and themes. But she finds her own way through mountains of material in the series that is at once highly compelling and difficult to watch — though I suggest you do.

This documentary feels timely and resonant because, 20 years on, it still seems like unfinished business.

Race Against Time isn’t determined to break new information or even to offer refined understanding. Instead, it’s a straightforward and passionate reminder that just because we know what went so very wrong in New Orleans — resulting in an estimated 1,392 fatalities and $125 billion in damages — doesn’t mean that lessons were learned or retained.

Directed by Traci A. Curry and edited, deftly, by Jeremy Siefer, “Katrina” is an irresistibly absorbing series, about bad planning, no planning, arrogant administrations, racism and doing emergency response on the cheap.