As the Crow Flies

Eighteen teenagers. Seven life-changing weeks.

Every summer, the Royal Canadian Air Cadets offers its top cadets the chance to participate in an elite flight-training camp. As the Crow Flies follows a group of these young men and women as they undergo seven weeks of training to get their pilot’s license in an intense program that normally takes six to eight months.

Casting an especially affectionate and empathetic eye on her female subjects, filmmaker Tess Girard—herself a graduate of the program—creates a unique and intimate portrait of an extraordinary, yet also very recognizable, group of 17-year-olds as they come of age. As one cadet says, the program is “not only learning about flying, but also about how intricate everything is.”

As the Crow Flies provides an insider’s view of the rigours of the camp in its beautifully observed story about a rite of passage.