Russia To Shoot The First Full-Length Movie In Space, Aboard The ISS
Image via Roscosmos
Come October 5, Russia will officially be the first to broach a new frontier in space travel and exploration: filming a full-length movie.
The Challenge follows the story of a female doctor being launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on short notice in order to save the life of a cosmonaut stationed there.
Rather than filming it on a set on Earth, the actress Yulia Peresild, film director Klim Shipenko, cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, and their doubles—Alena Mordovina, Alexey Dudin, Oleg Artemyev—will be taking it one step further instead.
If all goes to plan, Peresild, Shipenko, and Shkaplerov will be flying to space in less than a month aboard a Soyuz capsule to begin filming in the Russian segment of the ISS.
It was announced by the Russian space agency Roscosmos last month that all six were medically fit to fly. This mission will last around a week, where segments of the film will be shot. Shkaplerov will remain longer, though, and is only scheduled to return to Earth next year.
Filming in space isn’t entirely brand new; the Apollo missions to the moon, for example, were among the first live television broadcasts.
However, this will be the first time a movie is being produced away from Earth. It’ll also be the first to fly an actor and director to space with the express purpose of doing so.
As reported by The New York Times, the personnel scheduled to fly spoke enthusiastically about their upcoming journey at a news conference in Moscow on Thursday.
“For the first two seconds it’s scary,” said Peresild of her training, which involved an airplane flight that created a brief microgravity environment, reminiscent of what she’ll experience in space. “After that, it’s beautiful.”
The new film wishes to be able to portray true weightlessness for the first time. They also hope to capture the moment of awe and emotion upon freely floating in space and seeing Earth from an angle otherwise inaccessible.
[via The New York Times, image via Roscosmos]
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