A Russian actress and director have blasted into orbit to make history by shooting the first movie in space.
While Tom Cruise talked about his intentions for a space movie, actress Yulia Peresild, 37, and film director Klim Shipenko, 38, beat him to it, travelling to the International Space Station on Tuesday.
Led by cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, the crew travelled in a Soyuz MS-19 spaceship for a 12-day mission at the ISS to film scenes for the upcoming movie The Challenge.
“It was difficult psychologically, physically and emotionally… but I think when we reach our goal all the challenges won’t seem so bad,” Peresild said at a pre-flight press conference on Monday.
Shkaplerov and two other Russian cosmonauts aboard the ISS, Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov, are said to have cameo roles in the film.
The Soyuz docked with the ISS a little over three hours after take-off, a little later than planned as the spaceship’s automatic Kurs docking system failed and the Shkaplerov had to switch to manual control.
The movie’s plot has been kept quiet for the most part but it was revealed by Roscosmos to focus on a female surgeon who is dispatched to the ISS to save a cosmonaut who’s lost consciousness.
The expedition will implement the #Challenge project, with the Russian crew to become the first in the world to shoot a feature film in space.
The film is about a girl-doctor, who has one month to prepare for a spaceflight and go to ISS to solve an important task. pic.twitter.com/psGMhsyrV4
— РОСКОСМОС (@roscosmos) October 5, 2021
While it may not sound like that strong of a plot at this point, director Klim Shipenko has been involved in several commercially successful movies, including Serf, a movie that set a Russian box office record in 2019.
The Challenge is reported to be the brainchild of Dmitry Rogozin the Roscosmos chief.
Rogozin has seen some controversy while preparing the film, at one point firing the space agency’s head of crewed missions in a row over the project.
Sergei Krikalev, a veteran of space missions, was reinstated days later after widespread anger at his firing.
Another cosmonaut, Mikhail Kornienko, told BBC Russia that many people were opposed to the making of the film:
“The ISS is no place for performers, all sorts of clowns or tourists. It’s a huge space lab and you shouldn’t get in the way of professional work.”
