The Spacewalker

On 18 March 1965 Alexei Leonov left the Voskhod 2 capsule and became the first human to walk freely in space. The walk lasted twelve minutes and nearly killed him: his suit inflated in vacuum, he could no longer fit back into the airlock, and he had to bleed off pressure to get inside. On the return the automatic landing system failed and the capsule came down in the forests of Siberia, days from any rescue team. Dmitry Kiselev's film covers that mission. Yevgeny Mironov plays Leonov and Konstantin Khabensky the commander Pavel Belyayev; Mironov is also one of the producers, alongside Timur Bekmambetov. Leonov himself consulted on the film. Its best quality is refusing to build the space race as a story of triumph. The mission is launched early to meet a political timetable, and something fails at nearly every stage; heroism here consists not of success but of managing one malfunction after another. Who it is for: viewers who like space history and technical suspense. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a critical account of the Soviet programme, since the film's register is openly monumental.