This "mockumentary" mixes facts and fantasy, vintage footage, and fake footage, a mix of the the vintage and the new, in showing the successes and failures, the injustices and contradictions in Stalinist Russia, using its space program as the basis.
The film begins in the spring of 1938, in the mountains of northern Chile, where a flying object fell, in flames, later referred to as the Chilean Sphere". This episode is composed of clearly recently reconstructed scenes. So, an investigation of the episode by a filming team, comes upon an important discovery. This is a secret space program developed in the Soviet Union before World War II. Scientists and military authorities, the film would have you believe, had developed a spaceship 23 years before Yuri Gagarin ever went to space.
The amusing elements of fiction and true statements of the Stalin era the interesting features of this film, which lack continuity, not always easy to follow. I think it was intended for the intellectuals of the former Soviet Republics, particularly Russia, Kazakhstan, and the Ucraine. Its appeal, even in the festival circuit, is very limited.
Lacking cohesion, and depending on the non-stop loud Russian-language commentary to follow the film, it is not comprehensible to the non-Russian speaker, or a non-ex Soviet citizen in one screening. And who'd want to sit through another screening. Though the idea sounds good, it will really be quite boring to most everyone.
