Why Hidden Figures Is An Important Film Today

Posted: June 17, 2020

Hidden Figures is a movie that celebrates women and the gender and racial barriers and divides that they often have to overcome.

Hidden Figures is a movie based in the 60’s, when the discrimination towards colored people was at its peak. This movie is a touching real life story of three African American women Scientists who play a prominent role in the initial years of NASA’s space program of sending the first person into orbit.

It is heartwarming to see how the three ladies despite facing racial and gender discrimination stand up to what they believe and pave a way to the future generations by breaking barriers.

Meet the three main characters

There’s the gifted Katherine who excels at Math and calculates the math for the orbitation of the Friendship 7, the spirited Mary Jackkson who breaks norms to become the first woman to study Aeronautical engineering among all white men.

There is Dorothy who has a knack with machines and trains a group of colored women on IBM machines and becomes the first Afro American woman supervisor at NASA.

There’s one scene where Katherine has to walk half a mile just to relieve herself and her boss’s reaction to this incident is worth watching. How the three women play a vital role in sending the first astronaut to orbit around Earth is truly inspiring.

It is a movie for women. It tells a riveting story of how these three ladies fight for their rights against racial and gender discrimination and emerge as winners is worth watching, a must watch movie!

Closer to home, we have our very own Hindi movie Mission Mangal which tells the story of how women played a key role behind the success of Mangalyan.

The takeaway

We need more such movies to drive through an important fact that women can do wonders without any support. We need to imagine what they can achieve if they have the total support of society.

Even though his movie was based in the 60’s, there is still a lot we can learn from it, especially given today’s social and political landscape. Gender and racial discrimination still exists in our society and we as women, need to stand up for other women.

Image Source: Engadget