Nouvelle-Orléans, laboratoire de l’Amérique
Alexandra Kandy Longuet
2016 - 50 min - Couleur - France, Belgique

On the 29th of August, 2005, Hurricane Katrina, the most violent storm in the history of the United States, ravages the city of New Orleans. The city’s entire population is displaced and the Crescent City is to be rebuilt completely.
In the land of opportunity, the disaster provides an opportunity for the city’s renaissance on a fairer basis. But against all expectations and despite the Obama presidency, another logic governs plans for reconstruction. The disaster quickly becomes an opportunity to run a neoliberal approach of the response, using the public’s disorientation following the massive shock, and intensifying drastically the economic, social and racial inequalities that existed before the storm.
Through the eyes of inhabitants, musicians and entrepreneurs, the film uncovers how New Orleans becomes the US laboratory and reveals the divisions of a whole country.
Scattered from Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans’s residents discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened.