Russia already has the cast that will travel to the ISS to shoot the first movie in space . Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, announced that it had chosen actress Yulia Peresild to star in the film produced in space entitled “Challenge”, “The Challenge.” The director will be Klim Shipenko. Both will be sent to the international space station as part of Russia’s Soyuz mission.
The film tells of a doctor sent on short notice to the International Space Station in order to save the life of a cosmonaut. If filmed as scheduled next month, it would surpass Hollywood in low Earth orbit. A new space race?
The first movie shot in space
Production on the film is scheduled to begin on October 5, 2021, the same month that American actor Tom Cruise and director Doug Liman are expected to arrive on the ISS to film the first Hollywood production in space. In this case, they will work with SpaceX and NASA to do so.
The space station, which orbits the Earth at an altitude of around 354 km, will be visited just a few weeks after the first fully civilian crew aboard a SpaceX-developed rocket and capsule carried out their historic mission of being dispatched. into space, which, again, adds an element of competition between Russia and the United States that dates back several decades.
Although many movies have used zero-gravity flights to simulate space (such as “Apollo 13”), none have been filmed in space before. As such, the entire film crew has undergone rigorous training to ensure they are ready for the task.
“Among other things, they will have to perform centrifugation tests, vibration support tests, conduct introductory and training flights in a zero-gravity aircraft, undergo parachute training,” the Roscosmos space agency said in a statement.
The leading actress in space
The protagonist, Yulia Peresild , 37, who has starred in films such as “The Battle for Sevastopol” or “The Golden Horde,” said she hoped to portray weightlessness as never seen before in fiction.
The director, meanwhile, Klim Shipenko , faces another extra challenge apart from the curiosity of shooting in space: he is 1.9 meters tall, so his height will make the activity inside the spaceship a little uncomfortable for him. But they say adaptations will be made in the future to improve their well-being at work, in the event a second part is shot.
Peresild and Klim Shipenko, the principal crew principal, plan to take a round trip in a Soyuz capsule and spend 10 days filming on the Russian segment of the space station . It is not clear when NASA plans to also start its space film project, but what is known is the date of the launch of this particular space mission.
The professional cosmonauts of the crew will also appear in the film. “I will not be the protagonist, but I will still have to find out how a film is produced in such an unusual place as outer space,” said Commander Anton Shkaplerov.
