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Hollywood star Tom Cruise wanted to be the first, but she got ahead of him: the Russian actress Julia Peressild will work with director Klim Schipenko to shoot the first fictional film drama in space.
To do this, on Tuesday, accompanied by a cosmonaut, they took a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur spaceport to the international space station ISS at an altitude of 400 kilometers.
Two hours after the docking maneuver, they were able to slide inside through the lock.
The two cosmonauts currently working on the ISS are involved - and have already filmed Peressild's arrival on the space station.
Julia Peressild, actress:
»Every 30 seconds there was something new for us today.
We met the crew of the astronauts and cosmonauts who live here.
It still seems like a dream to me. "
In the planned film with the working title
»Challenge«
, Peressild plays a doctor who is supposed to save the life of a cosmonaut on the ISS. According to the state broadcaster Perwy Kanal, the team on board the station has twelve days to shoot 35 to 40 minutes of the final film. The film crew has been prepared for their mission at the Juri Gargarin Space Center.
The scientists from the Russian space agency Roskosmos had previously criticized the fact that public funds instead of research were used for an art project and that two astronauts had to stay on earth instead of the filmmakers. Similar requests were turned down - like that of British director Ben Turner. He had the support of NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy for his documentary series "Among the Stars". But his request to film on the ISS was rejected.
Ben Turner, director:
“I begged and pleaded, but I couldn't get her to let me up. So I was worried about how we could film there. That now seemed the challenge. Eventually it became the easiest part of production. We talked to Chris for a long time: There are a lot of cameras up there and he was filming himself. "
After the race for the first civilian space flight between the two multi-billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson in July, Russia wants to do PR for Russian space travel with this project.
Because Russia is also planning to send private space tourists into space in order to earn additional money.
Most recently, the Russian space industry suffered from accidents, corruption and the loss of important US revenues.
Since 2020, the United States has been able to send astronauts directly from American soil to the ISS with Dragon capsules from Elon Musk's company SpaceX and has less need for Russian missile technology.
