Teacher Guide
Learning goals, teaching notes, and answer keys.
View Teacher NotesPaper & online answer keysThe Boy Who Harnessed the Wind Movie Guide
Choose the format that fits your classroom, then explore the film through focused questions and evidence.
About the Film
William combines reading, observation, and local materials while his family faces a food crisis. Examine problem solving alongside the social conditions that make learning and cooperation difficult.
Movie at a Glance
- Release year
- 2019
- Genre
- Biographical engineering drama
- U.S. rating
- TV-PG (Netflix U.S. label)
- Runtime
- Approx. 113 minutes
- Director
- Chiwetel Ejiofor
- Screenplay
- Chiwetel Ejiofor
- Based on
- William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer’s memoir
- Music
- Antonio Pinto
- Featured cast
- Maxwell Simba, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Aïssa Maïga & Lily Banda
- Story setting
- Dramatized rural Malawi · around the 2001 famine
Check your edition when planning class periods; cuts and playback speeds can change runtime.
Content to Preview
- Famine, hunger, theft, violence, and a death in the family.
- Threats, public beating, political repression, and intense family distress.
- Some language and hardship involving children.
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: Netflix U.S. film information · Content advisory (spoilers)