Los Angeles Film Festival

Space Tourists

(Switzerland, 2009, 98 mins, DigiBeta (NTSC))

Producer: Christian Frei
Cinematographer: Peter Indergand
Editors: Christian Frei, Andreas Winterstein
Cast: Anousheh Ansari, Jonas Bendiksen, Dumitru Popescu, Charles Simonyi

In the not so distant past, media outlets gathered excitedly every time the U.S. or Soviet Union launched a flight into space. Today, space flights only receive secondary coverage, leaving many to wonder what happened to the promise that space travel once held. Christian Frei’s dream-like documentary Space Tourists addresses this question as he transports us to the rarely-glimpsed world of Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome. With its crumbling edifices, abandoned housing projects, and timeworn artworks, the once-great Baikonur is only a shadow of its former self. With the high price tag of space flight, space tourism—priced at $20 million per journey—has become the only way for Russia to fund their space program.

Examining both the idealism and the reality behind space exploration today, Frei’s documentary launches us into space with the first woman space tourist, an Iranian-American Texas millionaire, while on the ground a motley crew of “space junk” collectors make their living off what comes tumbling to earth.

Jennifer Wilson

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