Teacher Guide
Learning goals, teaching notes, and answer keys.
View Teacher NotesPaper & online answer keysHidden Figures Movie Guide
Choose the format that fits your classroom, then explore the film through focused questions and evidence.
About the Film
Three Black women use mathematical expertise, advocacy, and collaboration to advance the space program while confronting unequal access to work, recognition, and education.
Movie at a Glance
- Release year
- 2016
- Genre
- Biographical drama
- U.S. rating
- PG
- Runtime
- Approx. 127 minutes
- Director
- Theodore Melfi
- Screenplay
- Allison Schroeder & Theodore Melfi
- Based on
- Margot Lee Shetterly’s nonfiction book and the careers of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan & Mary Jackson
- Music
- Hans Zimmer, Pharrell Williams & Benjamin Wallfisch
- Featured cast
- Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe & Kevin Costner
- Story setting
- NASA Langley, Virginia · Principally the early 1960s, with earlier events compressed
Check your edition when planning class periods; cuts and playback speeds can change runtime.
Content to Preview
- Racial and gender discrimination, humiliating exclusion, tense arguments, and period terminology.
- Some profanity, brief romantic scenes, and adult drinking.
- Spaceflight danger and family or workplace stress.
Preview your edition, follow school viewing and permission policies, and provide an appropriate alternative assignment. Suggested grades 7–12 are Teach Arcade’s classroom recommendation, separate from the film’s U.S. rating.
Classroom Connections
Use scene evidence to explore the topics above. Pair historical portrayals with reliable sources, literary adaptations with their texts, and animated metaphors with appropriate factual context.
Film details, advisories & classroom context: Studio details · Content advisory (spoilers) · NASA: Dorothy Vaughan · NASA: Mary Jackson · NASA: Katherine Johnson