Four scientists travel to Brazil’s City of God, an impoverished Rio de Janeiro neighborhood, where they spend two weeks in a local school teaching kids about science. There, they surprise the kids with an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experiment: the chance to do their own exploring on Mars using an actual NASA spacecraft.

Today, nearly 385 million children around the world live in extreme poverty, and, in our modern world, the days of high-wage, low-skilled manufacturing jobs are coming to an end. But, with a wealth of jobs becoming available in science and technology fields, science education has become the key to pulling kids out of poverty so that they can eventually find jobs and rewarding careers. Yet, governments are not providing adequate education to solve the poverty problem.

As a filmmaker, It was important to me to make Mars Academy to explore how caring individuals in non-profit organizations can solve these problems head-on, sidestepping the problem of governmental neglect. I hope that this film motivates educators to work toward incorporating more hands-on, science-based education into their classrooms and motivates science professionals to become interested in how they can help the disadvantaged become our future scientists.

Producers: Jeff Marlow and Hank Leukart

Director: Hank Leukart

Cinematographers: Felipe Carrelli and Anali Dupré

Awards: Borrego Springs Film Festival, Official Selection; SCINEMA International Science Film Festival, Official Selection