The Challenge (2023) Вызов

I saw this movie a few days ago through the Cuevana platform and I was struck by the fact that I read in the synopsis that it was the first movie filmed in space, also it does not belong to the big American or Hindu production companies but it is a complete Russian production.

The plot is interesting but the photography in the actions on the ground seemed to me very poor, the actions in the Baikonur Cosmodrome and in the Yuri Gagarin training center are dark and confusing, however those that take place in the International Space Station are clear.

Undoubtedly it is a daring film given the film's complicity, the fact that the director Klim Shipenko and the protagonist Yulia Peresild had to undergo training for almost four months to be able to go into space.

The script written by the director together with Bakur Bakuradze is somewhat simple as in it one of the veteran astronauts on the Space Station suffers a walking accident and has to undergo an emergency operation in order to return to Earth as fractured ribs pierced the pleura.

It is a procedure not so simple on Earth but never performed in space and for this task they choose the surgeon Zhenya who has to manage to carry out the mission, improvising taking into account the space limitations she has.

The medical images of the laparoscopic procedure are correct and without a doubt, although with some scenes out of order or too predictable, there is always a stimulus to keep watching it until the end.

The cost of the film was approximately 150 billion rubles, which in dollars is in the vicinity of 14 billion rubles, while the box office takings since it was released only on April 20 last month are already over 400 billion rubles.

The film also features astronauts Anton Shkaplerov, Soyuz commander, and Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov, both cosmonauts who were living on the orbital platform at the time of filming.

The filming took place in the Russian modules Nauka and Svezda and other segments of the ISS. It should be noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself declared at the premiere of the film held in the Kremlin: "Here too we have once again become the first", this event coincided with the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight (1961) on April 12.

As a milestone for filmmaking it is undoubtedly important, but personally I did not find it something extraordinary, but just another entertainment film.

The Russian name of this production is Вызов.