The Axe in the Attic

"The Axe in the Attic" documents filmmakers Ed Pincus and Lucia Small's 60-day road trip from New England to New Orleans, capturing emotional interviews with Hurricane Katrina survivors and showing vivid scenes of the devastated landscape. The filmmakers encounter a range of evacuees grappling with the daily grind of their altered lives--from a close-knit African-American family from New Orleans' Lower Ninth starting over in the wintry hills of suburban Pittsburgh; to a single working mother raising two teenagers in a condo on the outskirts of Cincinnati; to Baker, Louisiana, where the residents of FEMA's largest trailer park live as if in a refugee camp. In the process, Small and Pincus reveal their own role in these encounters and thus bring the viewer closer to the many stories in the film.