This is the only Hurricane Katrina documentary that actually started filming before the hurricane. The filmmakers were shooting a separate documentary in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans for the three months prior to Hurricane Katrina. The Ninth Ward became an area of New Orleans that was hardest hit by the hurricane and resulting flood. Filmmaker Stephen Rue is a native of New Orleans and he changed the focus of the film after the largest natural disaster in American history had destroyed his home and his hometown