US, Russia in new space race, now for a movie

MOSCOW: Six decades after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth, earning Moscow a key win in the Cold War, Russia is again in a space race with Washington. This time though the stakes are somewhat glitzier.

On October 5, one of Russia’s most celebrated actresses, 36-year-old Yulia Peresild is blasting off to the International Space Station (ISS) with film director Klim Shipenko, 38.

Their mission? Shoot the first film in orbit before the Americans do. If their plan falls into place, the Russians are expected to beat Mission Impossible star Tom Cruise and Hollywood director Doug Liman, who were first to announce their project together with Nasa and Space X, the company of billionaire Elon Musk.

“I really want us to be not only the first but also the best,” Peresild told AFP, with the clock ticking down to the planned October 5 blast-off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The Call -- the Russian project’s working title -- was announced in September last year, four months after the Hollywood project.

But apart from its grand ambitions, little is known about the film. Its plot, which has been kept under wraps by the crew and Russia’s space agency, has been revealed by Russian media outlets to feature a doctor dispatched urgently to the ISS to save a cosmonaut. Nor has The Call’s budget been disclosed. But it’s no secret that travel to space is a costly business: one seat on a Soyuz rocket to the ISS usually costs Nasa tens of millions of dollars. Hinting at the film’s aesthetic direction, one big name on the credit list is Konstantin Ernst, the 60-year-old head of the overtly Kremlin-friendly Channel One television network.

Ernst has stage-managed some of the most important moments in Russia’s recent political history and of President Vladimir Putin’s career.