ZEISS Full Exposure

Producer-director Jenna Ricker has worked solely in narrative film until now. In “Qualified,” her first non-fiction feature, the film’s subject is a pioneer in motor sports — and feminism — Janet Guthrie, the first woman to compete in the Memorial Day spectacle, the Indianapolis 500. Janet started out as an aerospace engineer with a longing for flight and a parallel love of motor sports, which in turn steered her into racing on the stock car circuit. In 1977, her passion and skill for auto racing — honed on road tracks like Daytona and Sebring — led her to be enlisted as the first woman to qualify for Indy. This required her to not only be an elite athlete reaching the pinnacle of American auto racing, breaking into one of the last bastions of the male dominated sport, but she also had to endure a barrage of public insults and belittlement; yet she persisted. “Qualified” is a documentary covering a pivotal moment in U.S. sports history, a gripping and inspiring chronicle of the calm resolve of racer Janet Gut