Upon its release in 2020, locally produced documentary film Fly Like A Girl received national acclaim throughout the film-festival circuit and won four awards. This month, it’s been picked up by big-name streaming services like Hulu and Amazon Prime.
From a Lego-loving young girl who includes female pilots in her toy airplanes, to a courageous woman who helped lead shuttle missions to space, Fly Like A Girl brings the real-life stories of a diverse group of female aviators to light. The film reveals a movement of girls and women relentlessly pursuing their passion for aviation, a field currently dominated by men. The film includes interviews with Vernice Armour, the first female African American combat pilot; Nicole Stott, flight engineer and mission specialist on NASA shuttle missions; Senator Tammy Duckworth, Iraq War Veteran; and Purple Heart recipient, Shaesta Waiz, the youngest woman to fly solo around the world in a single-engine aircraft, as well as several other remarkable girls and women.
Fly Like A Girl is produced by Lakeland-based Indie Atlantic Films and is available now for streaming on all major services, including the iTunes and Google Play stores, Amazon Prime Video, Fandango Now, VUDU, YouTube, PlayStation, and Vimeo On Demand. This April, the film will be available for streaming on Hulu.
Katie McEntire Wiatt, the film’s director, first developed the idea for the film when she was a Polk County primary school teacher and saw firsthand the gap in confidence young female students felt in the classroom, especially in relation to STEM subjects. Around the same time, Wiatt also saw aerobatic pilot Patty Wagstaff fly at the annual SUN ‘n FUN Aerospace Expo in Lakeland and was inspired to learn more about female aviators.