Outraged by events unfolding in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Lucia Small cajoled fellow documentarian Ed Pincus out of retirement to road-trip from New England to the Big Easy, capturing stories from those displaced by the natural disaster along the way. The Axe in the Attic charts the filmmakers' journey in rough-hewn verité style, their main aesthetic tack being to point their camera in the direction of scenes of terrible wreckage and the faces of confused, distraught, and furious people, and hope that something magical happens. It's an approach that reaps some visual dividends, conveying the enormity of what's happened via haunting tracking shots of the decimated landscapes, which—marked by houses perched on trees, and streets covered in household debris—speak far more poignantly about loss and negligence than any of the directors' human portraits.