In October 2021, before Russia invaded Ukraine, “The Challenge” was filmed aboard the International Space Station, at an altitude of at least 400 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. The name of the film was chosen very well because the project was indeed a real challenge for director Klim Shipenko. He described the film as an “experiment” because “there was no one to take advice from”.

Actress Yulia Peresild played the lead role in “Challenge”. Director Shpenko himself will also appear with cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov, Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov. The film follows a doctor, played by Peresild, who has shown no interest in space travel. However, she is called upon to travel to the International Space Station to save the life of an astronaut there. Nowitzki played the ailing cosmonaut.

Watch the trailer for The Challenge here.

The “Challenge” cost about 1.115 billion rubles (about 13.8 million euros). The film is produced by the Roscosmos space agency, Channel One and the Yellow, Black and White film studio. The head of space, Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roskosmos, named himself the producer of the project.

Thus, “The Challenge” is the first full-length film for which the cast was flown into space for the twelve-day recordings. However, earlier other projects appeared, but not a full-fledged movie, which was filmed on the International Space Station. For example, the space station was already used for scenes in an IMAX documentary in 2002 with Tom Cruise as narrator and for an eight-minute short film by space tourist Richard Garriott.