After the Storm
After the Storm is an interactive documentary that tells the first-person story of what happens in the wake of a devastating tornado that ripped through central Alabama in 2011. Written as a letter to future disaster survivors, it’s a universal story of survival, healing, and resilience.
Premiere Date
April 27, 2015
Funding Type
Awards & Recognition
Nominee
2015 News and Documentary Emmy Awards - New Approach: Documentary
On the afternoon of April 27th, 2011, a half-mile wide tornado plowed through the middle of Tuscaloosa, a small southern college town in central Alabama. It touched down about a quarter of a mile outside the city and mangled its way nearly six miles through the heart of town. A half-mile wide when it touched down, it got wider and eventually destroyed 4,700 homes, damaged thousands more, injured over 1,500 people, and took out scores of city’s businesses. Somehow, miraculously, it killed only 50 people, but when President Obama visited the city three days later he said, “I've never seen destruction like this.”
But as local filmmaker Andrew Beck Grace found out in the days after the storm, numbers, adjectives, even images only go so far in describing what it means to wake up to your world completely rearranged.
After the Storm, a unique interactive documentary essay, tells the story of what happens after the storm passes, after the media leaves town, and after the adrenaline subsides. Written as a letter to future disaster survivors, the film is not so much about the how and why of the tornado the filmmaker lived through, but it's instead about that central question all of us face after living through something traumatic. Namely, how do we make sense of it all?