Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006) is examined as a witnessing on the national scale of the trauma felt by those who experienced flooding in the aftermath of Katrina. The premise is that national acknowledgment of the wound, and this mourning, can only happen as the silence following trauma is drawn into public discourse. Spike Lee does this with a variety of interlocking filmic techniques including archival footage, interviews, vistas of devastation and commentary through music.