Film is a powerful tool for audience engagement and education. Using films to illuminate scientific topics and engage students around various elements of STEM is particularly effective. Moving pictures can truly bring science to life as they take viewers underwater, into space, inside a scientific lab, to the edge of a brilliant discovery, to the African savannah, or to a barren desert landscape teeming with hidden life. We highlight a variety of films that each bring science to life in their own unique ways. There’s something for everyone on this list. Dig in and enjoy!
Blackfish (2013)
Blackfish is a powerful and, at times, difficult documentary to watch as it provides an intimate look at the orca whale: the social structures and important family bonds of these marine mammals and the ways in which those bonds are brutally severed by marine parks. Through the story of one particular orca whale: Tilikum, the filmmakers explore not only marine life but also human nature.
Read our review here
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (2013)
Based on the true story of 13-year-old William Kamkwamba, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a narrative film that illuminates not only the brutal effects of drought in a rural community, but also the power of scientific discovery and innovation as Kamkwamba learns how to generate electricity for his community, in order to irrigate fields, and builds massive windmills using recycled materials.
This film can certainly inspire other teens to consider how they can bring science to life in their own communities. Journeys In Film has both a free comprehensive CORE-based curriculum for educators to use in conjunction with the film and a discussion guide that families or movie clubs could use to extend their film experience.
Coded Bias (2020)
This new documentary, currently available on Netflix, brings to life the important intersection of science and technology as it explores the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini’s discovery that facial recognition software did not work accurately on dark-skinned faces and her journey to seek legislative action around bias in technology and the development of Artificial Intelligence.
Inventing Tomorrow (2019)
Directed by Laura Nix, this Peabody Award-Winning documentary introduces the audience to teenage innovators around the world who are using science to tackle some of the most significant challenges facing humanity today. These young scientists take us inside their scientific process and truly bring science to life for viewers.
Read our review here
March of the Penguins (2005)
This stunning documentary takes viewers to a place few, if any, could ever go in real life: to the cold, brutal world of Antarctica where Emperor Penguins breed, nest, and raise their young chicks (those who can survive the cold temperatures, fierce winds and fracturing ice of the Antarctic). Scientists see these penguins as a scientific enigma and this film lets us experience it all. This film reawakened in me the young girl who dreamed, once, of being a marine biologist.
Read our review here
My Octopus Teacher (2020)
Recipient of the 2021 Oscar for Best Documentary film, My Octopus Teacher also excites the wanna-be marine biologist inside many of us and truly illuminates the underwater world that the octopus in the film inhabits.
Through the intimate relationship that forms between a scuba diver and the octopus he comes to call his teacher, we gain insight into the scientific world that makes up the octopus’s landscape and increase our understanding of the behavior and impressive adaptive abilities of these majestic creatures.
Scientists praise the film for the ways that it inspires an appreciation of the natural world and cultivates a desire among viewers to understand the interdependency of the world humans share with other creatures.
One Strange Rock (2018)
Technically a television series, this National Geographic presentation, hosted by actor Will Smith, tells the story of how life developed and thrives on Earth. Each of the eight episodes is told by a different astronaut, anchored by their individual experience of being in space and looking at the Earth from that unique vantage point. This series takes us inside the science that supports our planet. To deepen one’s understanding, download the free corresponding curriculum materials from Journeys In Film, which features a lesson for each episode.
Planet Earth: The Complete Collection (2006)
Stunning and still memorable, this film series is a feat unlike any other in the world of nature documentaries. With eleven episodes narrated brilliantly by David Attenborough, this high-definition series shows planet Earth in all her topographic glory with emphasis on the diversity of species that inhabit Earth.
Radioactive (2019)
Rosamund Pike plays Marie Curie in a film that expands our understanding of who Marie Curie was and the challenges she faced as a leading woman scientist ahead of her time. The film offers a full view of Curie’s life while also offering important insight into the significance of her scientific discoveries. It brings to life the science of radioactive materials and their resounding impact on the world, good and bad.
Science Fair (2018)
Another National Geographic documentary, this film has been praised as an “ode to the teenage science geek,” and what a better way to step inside science than alongside teenagers who are obsessed with it and are seeking to make their mark in the scientific community through epic science fair projects. These students want to change the world through science, and we get to watch them try to do it.
