The first feature-length fiction shot in orbit opened in Russian theaters on Thursday, prompting pride in Moscow for having preempted a rival US project in the midst of a diplomatic crisis over the conflict in Ukraine.
To shoot “The Challenge”, which tells the story of a surgeon sent to the International Space Station (ISS) to operate on an injured cosmonaut, Russia sent an actress and a director into orbit in October 2021 for 12 days.
The project, carried out quickly to get ahead of a US initiative led by Tom Cruise, has become a source of pride for Moscow, amid a space rivalry with Washington reminiscent of Cold War times.
“We are the first to have shot a feature film on board a spacecraft in orbit, again the first,” Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated himself on April 12, who likes to recall that Moscow sent the first man to the space, in 1961.
In Moscow, several people walk in front of the Soyuz MS-18 space capsule, which brought the film crew to Earth and is now on display in the famous Gorky Park.
“We are proud of our Russian actors,” says Polina Andreyeva, a marketing specialist.
“It is very interesting to see how our town progresses, that it has been the first to make a film in space,” adds Tatiana Kulikova, a company employee.
“We are Russia, Russia is always ahead,” he insists.
accelerated training
If this feature film has garnered so much praise, it is also because Russia has been mired in a deep diplomatic crisis with the West since the launch of Moscow’s offensive against Ukraine in February 2022.
The United States and European countries have imposed a series of diplomatic and economic sanctions on Russia.
The space sector seems to be, for the moment, one of the last fields of cooperation between Russians and Westerners, although the rivalry is fierce, especially since the rise of private companies, such as Elon Musk’s American SpaceX.
“The Challenge” is co-produced by the Russian space agency Roscosmos and the Pervy Kanal television network.
“We are all fans of ‘Gravity,'” a Hollywood space film released in 2013, Konstantin Ernst, head of Pervy Kanal, said on Monday.
“But our ‘Challenge,’ shot in real zero gravity, shows that it was just special effects” on the American film, he said.
The sequences recorded in the 230 m3 of the Russian module of the ISS and the participation of three Russian professional cosmonauts in the station give an effect of authenticity to the film, viewed by AFP.
Director Klim Chipenko, 39, who was in charge of the camera, lighting and sound, recorded 30 hours of footage, of which 50 minutes were used in the final editing.
The camera follows the actress Yulia Peresild, 38 years old and one of the most glamorous interpreters in Russia, moving in that small space.
Both the director and the interpreter underwent four months of accelerated training before being sent into space.