Directed By: Marian Kiss
2010 | 87 min
Germany, Hungary

Sunday, November 13: 1:30 pm

Linder Theater
Filmmaker in person and Hungarian cosmonaut Bertalan Farkas in Person | U.S. Premiere

When his capsule touched back to Earth, Bulgarian Aleksandr Aleksandrov was met with parades and songs and rewarded with a high-ranking position in the National Assembly. His acclaim was both intense and short-lived as part of the Soviet Union's Intercosmos Program, which, between 1978 and 1988, sent 13 "space sailors" from Soviet-allied countries on highly publicized weeklong missions to outer space. Hailing from Afghanistan to Vietnam, each man became a state-sponsored emblem of the socialist ideal. However, when the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, "everything was swept away," as filmmaker Marian Kiss notes, "including the heroes." A Hungarian with fond memories of her country's own space sailor, Kiss tracks down 10 of the travelers to find out where they landed after the collapse of the U.S.S.R.

Part of the series Dreams of Outer Space in conjunction with Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration

Margaret Mead Filmmaker Award Contender