First on the Moon

First on the Moon (, Pervye na Lune) is a 2005 Russian mockumentary science fiction film about a fictional 1930s Soviet landing on the Moon. The film, which went on to win many awards, was the debut of the director Aleksei Fedorchenko. Plot A group of journalists are investigating a highly secret document when they uncover a sensational story: that before the Second World War, in 1938, the first rocket was made in the USSR and Soviet scientists were planning to send an orbiter to the Moon and back. The evidence is convincing; it is clear that in this case, Soviet crewed lunar program cosmonauts were first. The movie follows the selection and training of a small group of cosmonauts. The one who shines above the others (similar to the clear front-runners in the early historical Soviet space program) is Captain Ivan Sergeyevich Kharlamov (possibly a reference to the real-life cosmonaut Valentin Varlamov). He is helped into a space suit and loaded into the capsule, and the rocket lifts off for the Moon—but contact with it is soon lost. Most of the remainder of the film seems to follow the search for information about what happened next, as the 1930s space program appears to have dissolved immediately after, with no reason given (but presumably as a part of Stalin's purges). It is implied that Kharlamov returned to Earth, but with no fanfare and apparently no assistance from the space program. A number of men are shown as suspected of being Kharlamov—the NKVD seems to be conducting a criminal investigation of the program and it is implied that those involved, including Kharlamov himself, are in hiding.