Friday marks the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall on the Gulf Coast. The catastrophic storm remains one of the deadliest and costliest natural disasters in U.S. history, killing nearly 1,400 people and causing widespread destruction — particularly in New Orleans, where levee failures left almost the entire city flooded.

Katrina displaced hundreds of thousands of residents from around the Gulf Coast, including then 4-year-old Terrance Leon George II, along with his mom and siblings. The family scrambled for survival in Gulfport, Mississippi, before being rescued and relocating to live with family in Bergen County, New Jersey.

George’s childhood experience during Katrina fundamentally influenced his life and now, as he starts his career as a filmmaker, his work. The Rutgers graduate found acclaim with “Terrance versus Katrina,” a short film he made as a student that allowed him to explore the complex emotions he felt about the storm.

“The reason I had to go outside the box for [“Terrance versus Katrina”] is because that’s the only way I could express the feelings of anger, resentment. Because in a way, I felt like Katrina ruined my life. But as I got older, I realized, you know, maybe Katrina was a blessing for me,” George said. “I realized that maybe 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? How do I just make peace of it? And after I made [“Terrance versus Katrina”], I kind of achieved that peace.”

Now George is back with “Can I Grow Old,” a short film taking on Black-on-Black violence. It’s scheduled to be shown on Sept. 4 at the CityPlex 12 Theater in Newark as part of the Newark International Film Festival.