Russia release first-ever movie shot in space
The Russian film industry is celebrating the release of the first feature film shot in space. Released Thursday, The Challenge follows a surgeon dispatched to the International Space Station to save an injured cosmonaut.
Back in October 2021, Russia sent an actor and a film director for a 12-day shoot on the ISS. Hollywood had previously announced a similar project in 2020 involving Tom Cruise, NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Russian President Vladimir Putin has praised the film, saying: “We are the first to have shot a feature film in orbit, aboard a spacecraft. Once again, the first”.
The Challange stars 38-year-old Russian actor Yulia Peresild as the surgeon sent to save a cosmonaut injured during a spacewalk. Director Klim Shipenko, who was in control of the camera, lighting and sound, returned from space with 30 hours of footage, 50 minutes of which were used for the final film.
Shipenko and Peresild were required to undergo four months of training before being shot into space on a Soyuz spacecraft. The footage was shot in the Russian module of the ISS and features cameos by three Russian cosmonauts stationed there. The boss of the Russian TV network Channel One has said that the biggest challenge was capturing “actual weightlessness” rather than computer-generated imagery.
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