The first feature-length fiction shot in orbit opened in Russian theaters on Thursday, with an especially evocative title in the context of Moscow’s new space ambitions versus Washington: The challenge.
To shoot this film, which features 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.
“We are the first”
The project, carried out in force to preempt a competing US initiative with Tom Cruise, has become an object of pride in Russia, recalling the space competition between Moscow and Washington during the Cold War.
“We are the first to have shot a feature film on board an orbiting spacecraft, again the first,” greeted Vladimir Putin on April 12, often playing on nostalgia for the Soviet era, when Moscow, for example, sent the first man into space in 1961.
The film is co-produced by the Russian space agency Roscosmos and the Pervy Kanal television channel, whose director, Konstantin Ernst, does not hide his joy at having beaten Hollywood.
“We are all fans of Gravity“, a Hollywood film about space released in 2013, said Konstantin Ernst on Monday, during a press conference to present the Russian film. “But our ChallengeShot in true weightlessness, today it brings out the digital special effects” of the American film, he said.
The mission of an impossible surgeon
The sequences shot in the 230 m3 Russian module of the ISS and the participation of the three Russian professional cosmonauts stationed on board give an effect of authenticity to the film, anticipated by AFP.
The challenge tells the story of the impossible mission of a surgeon, played by actress Ioulia Peressild, sent to the ISS to save a cosmonaut injured by debris during a spacewalk.
Director Klim Chipenko, 39, who handled the camera, lighting and sound recording, shot 30 hours of footage there, 50 minutes of which are used in the final cut.
The camera follows the 38-year-old actress moving around the confined space of the ISS, her blonde hair floating weightlessly. The two neocosmonauts underwent four months of accelerated training before being sent into space. The film cost “less than a billion rubles” (11.1 million euros), according to Konstantin Ernst.
Source: BFM TV
