Firelight

Casts : Cuba Gooding Jr., Q'orianka Kilcher, DeWanda Wise

The incarcerated girls and young women come from troubled – often violent – backgrounds. According to DJ, “They come in [here] so broken…These are girls who’ve been abused and objectified their whole lives.” The film illustrates how many of the young women achieve salvation through joining an elite band of volunteers tasked with battling forest fires, building hiking trails in remote areas and assisting during natural disasters.

The volunteers have to survive several weeks of rigorous training, be in peak physical condition and have to learn how to work as a team, often in life-threatening situations. DJ says that he developed the volunteer force “because I wanted to change the way these girls see themselves. To feel strong. To see other people respecting their strength.”In the words of Cuba Gooding Jr., “These women fought to save lives. They ended up saving their own.”