Academy Awards best picture nominee
AS THE United States raced against Russia to put a man in space, NASA found untapped talent in a group of African-American female mathematicians that served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in US history. Based on the unbelievably true life stories of three of these women, known as ‘human computers’, we follow these women as they quickly rose the ranks of NASA alongside many of history’s greatest minds specifically tasked with calculating the momentous launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, and guaranteeing his safe return. Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson crossed all gender, race, and professional lines while their brilliance and desire to dream big, beyond anything ever accomplished before by the human race, firmly cemented them in US history as true American heroes.
Hidden Figures is an American biographical drama directed by Theodore Melfi and written by Melfi and Allison Schroeder, based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly about female African-American mathematicians at NASA. The film stars Academy Award nominee Taraji P. Henson as Katherine G. Johnson, a mathematician who calculated flight trajectories for Project Mercury and other missions. The film also features Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer as Dorothy Vaughan and Janelle Monae as Mary Jackson, with Academy Award winner Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Glen Powell and Academy Award nominee Mahershala Ali, in supporting roles.