It's always refreshing to see that our former Cold War opponents would be at home at Sundance. "First On the Moon" is an avant garde Russian movie about, as the film's Wikipedia entry states: "a group of journalists {who} are investigating a highly secret document when they uncover a sensational story: that even before the Second World War, in 1938, the first rocket was made in the USSR and Soviet scientists were planning to send an orbiter to the moon and back. The evidence is convincing; it is clear that in this case, Russian cosmonauts were first."
In Alexander Prokhorov's review he writes, "The film begins in Chile where the Soviet spacecraft apparently landed after its return from the moon and traces the fate of the first Soviet 'cosmopilot,' Ivan Kharlamov (Boris Vlasov). This Zelig-like character travels from Chile across the Pacific, and then across China to Mongolia until he is finally captured by the NKVD and sent to a psychiatric ward. Eventually, he miraculously escapes from his cell and assumes a series of identities that allow him to hide from the secret police and to survive in the hostile and erratic environment of Soviet Russia."
Here's a scene from the film:
Okay . . . that wasn't really the film. But you guys are up enough on your Russian pop culture that you weren't fooled, right?
(Gouge: CM)
-- Ward
