When a supremely wealthy tourist shells out 20 million plus dollars to be shot into space, you can’t help but hate them just a little bit. It’s a fact that cannot be avoided, especially when the space center lies in one of the poorest and most desolate places on earth. But
Space Tourist, the new documentary film by Christian Frei finds a way to live in the world so quietly and carefully that you don't shove your finger down on the rage button straight away.
Well before our pal Richard Branson dived into the space tourism game, charging a modest fee of around 300k for Space Travel, it was mostly left to the Russians to take the non-astronauts into space. The Russians had a good thing going. They had funded the space program in a media friendly way. But
Space Tourist doesn’t get too wrapped up in just the story of Anousheh Ansari, the first female space tourist. The award-winning documentary explores the lives of several people who lie in the wings of the space game.
We meet Jonas Bendiksen, an intelligent photographer, who has dedicated years of his life to capturing the harsh landscape of Kazakhstan, which is littered with rockets that have fallen back to earth. We ride shotgun with a group of poor scrap metal hunters, who are also waiting for those same rockets to crash down, so they can make a few bucks selling the abandoned metal carcasses. The story jumps into workshop of Dumitru Popescu, a bumbling amateur rocket builder with a dream of winning a lucrative space competition.
Christain Frei weaves together a multi-dimensional story with a variety of characters that builds a picture of the Space Program. Every piece of information slowly muddles together and reveals a complex eco-system. For instance, the space station sits next to a village where people still ride donkeys.
Check out Space Tourist during MIFF.