20 years ago today, Hurricane Katrina hammered the Gulf Coast, one of the deadliest and costliest natural disasters in U.S. history, causing widespread destruction, especially in New Orleans, where levee failures led to catastrophic flooding that submerged 80 percent of the city.

The Category 4 hurricane took nearly 1,400 lives and displaced thousands of others, including then-4-year-old Terrence Leon George, his mom and siblings, who scrambled for survival in Gulfport, Mississippi.

Before they were rescued, though, and made their way to New Jersey, an encounter would change the trajectory of Terrence's life, as well as how he reckoned with the trauma.

In this special report, WNYC's Michael Hill shares his story.

Terrence Leon George II was a boy born in hard-time Mississippi, to borrow some lyrics from Stevie Wonder.

And on August 29, 2005, he was surrounded by the wind, water, and wicked ways of Hurricane Katrina and its devastation.

In the aftermath of that storm, Terrence says he was exposed to a camera for the first time.

20 years later, he's an aspiring filmmaker.

And next month, his "Can I Grow Old?"

will show at the Newark International Film Festival.

First, what Katrina did.

Initially, like, I remember when I first heard the pour, it was like you hear like little driblets on the roof, then the howling, the whipping noises of just the wind brushing the windows, then the glass shattering and everything breaking, then we heard the trees snapping.

It just, it started to pick up like really quickly and next thing you knew my house is like, there's a tree in our house, the ceiling collapsed, my head's bleeding, my mom's trying to like, rub my head, and I'm just like really just dazed and you know she's trying to show it us and everything, water's getting into our house, it was really bad.

Terrence Leon George II says his Gulfport, Mississippi single-parent family was poor before the storm.

Hurricane Katrina rendered them hungry, homeless, and nearly helpless.

And my mom, she was really worried about getting her check from Ruby Tuesdays.

They told her, despite her working 40 hours that week, they would not pay her.

In the deep south, scorching heat and humidity that followed, an encounter with a non-profit organization would change the trajectory of Terrence's life and his family's future.

Feed the Children gave them food.

The non-profit's crew with the camera and recording equipment fascinated Terrence, who had a speech impediment.

- Well, my twin brother used to speak for me back in the day.

So like, I just like whisper in his ear and like, he would like just ask him questions.

But like, we were just asking like, who are they?

What are they doing?

Are they superheroes?

Like, what is that?

Is that a weapon?

'Cause like, when you see a camera for the first time, like you can look at any of these cameras, like it looks like some sort of like alien, like, you know, like hardware or something.

So to me, it was like, as a country boy, you know, grew up in a simple like neighborhood.

I was like, wow, what is this?

Feed the Children made an ad, pitching for money to help Katrina survivors.

It featured Terrence's mother Nikki, giving a tour of their destroyed house.

Nikki would borrow a crew member's cell phone to call her father in Bergen County, New Jersey.

He had been alerted that Nikki and her family were on TV.

He watched the feed the children had.

Mr. Buggs, what did you think when you saw that spot?

They looked desperate to me.

Yeah, they were very desperate.

And I don't know.

I knew I had to do something.

Terrence's grandfather, Reginald Buggs Sr., and his wife loaded up the car and drove to Mississippi.

When they arrived, Terrence says, "In that moment to me, he was like Superman.

That was my hero."

"Well, I love my grandson.

I'm glad he felt that way.

It was a proud moment."

Buds recalls quickly collecting his daughter and grandchildren and heading back north.

They stop to eat at a Tennessee restaurant.

"My daughter starts talking to some of the waitresses and before we knew it, the whole restaurant took a collection from my daughter right then and there."

"What?"

"They took a collection in that restaurant for her right then and there.

They gave her $600 in the free meal and everything when we left there.

What I saw for the first time was Americans coming together for Americans, regardless of who you are or whatever.

I saw that when we're in trouble, we will come together.

And you gotta understand, all the patrons, they were white patrons, but they all collected.

One guy gave $100, another gave $50.

- New Jersey has been no Nirvana, but the Garden State has proven fertile with opportunities.

Opportunities Terrence thinks he never would have had in Mississippi.

Terrence got speech therapy at Inglewood Hospital, where his grandfather's a senior biomedical technician.

He thrived in school, had a brush with the law as a teen, and became even more fascinated, not just with photography, because his grandfather had given him a camera, but filmmaking.

So when I got to filmmaking, it was like, finally, I found a language where I can express myself, my emotions, my desires.

Terrence says NYU was his dream school, but too expensive.

Even with his grandfather's support, it seems though he found a dream at Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Fine Arts.

It's a small program, but they care so much.

You could tell the intensity in their eyes, just the love, the love, it's reciprocated.

They love their craft, they love teaching, they love being here, and I love being here too.

So seeing a staff that just cared so much about every little small detail, every fine detail.

Everyone that's used this classroom to do this interview, even though I'm alumni, it's just that support, that network, you know, you can't beat that.

It's just, it's love, you know, and I have love for the school and school has love for me, and through that love I'm able to be a better person.

The school, in a way, healed me.

At Mason Gross, Terrence made this film, Terrence vs. Katrina.

It delves into his emotions.

You said anger.

Anger with Katrina?

Well, yeah, because like, believe it or not, I didn't really talk to people, like, what really happened to me during Katrina.

When I was in kindergarten, I remember every day I used to play up the blocks, I would, like, kind of stimulate Katrina, so it was like a lot of trauma for me.

So every day I would just stimulate it, and then after we watched that feed the kids, I was kind of ashamed because, you know, it was like, I grew up poor, I came from nothing, and my mom was a single mom, so we were still poor, and still going through struggles.

So even though we got up here, it's not that it wasn't any better, it's that the ripples and the effects of the Katrina were still affecting us.

And to this day, I believe it still affects us.

Where's your anger now?

My anger is in the camera.

I put it in Temperance of Katrina, and I must say, that's a very powerful film I made.

It's like a spoken word, poetry, documentary kind of film.

It's very different, and the reason I had to go out of the box for this film is because that's the only way I could express the feelings of anger and resentment.

Because in a way, I felt like Katrina ruined my life.

But as I got older, I realized maybe Katrina was a blessing for me.

As unfortunate as it is to say, my life was a struggle.

My life was hard.

It was difficult, like, you know, maneuvering everything, having a single mom, having multiple siblings.

I have, I'm the oldest of like five siblings.

So, you know, it wasn't easy just going through all that.

But, I don't know, it's like I blame Katrina for everything that happened to me.

But then after I made the film, I made it like here at Mason Groves.

After making the film, I realized that, you know, like, maybe like it wasn't a storm that caused all my problems.

Maybe it's like my internalized rage and I was like, how do I deal with that?

Like, how do I just make peace with it?

And after I made the film, I kind of achieved that peace.

That peace is allowing Terrence to prosper and produce films.

His "Can I Grow Old" is about black-on-black violence.

What do you hope comes of this film?

Honestly, just more awareness because, you know, the film was made for the gunman, the person who's holding the barrel of the gun, and it's like, you know, we the audience are the gunman and he's talking to us, so I want people to reflect on their decision before you commit acts of violence, before you hurt your own people, your own brothers, your own sisters, you know, your own humanity.

Can I grow old has won numerous awards.

It will be shown next Thursday, September 4th at the cityplex 12 theater in Newark.

20 years after Terrence's fascination began with the camera, a Katrina silver lining on the silver screen in New Brunswick, Michael Hill for NJ spotlight news