Vremya Pervykh

Fearless fighter pilot Leonov is driven by a desire to redefine boundaries. His talents and willingness to assume risk make him the ideal candidate for a newly initiated cosmonaut training programme. Pressure from the country's political elite forces those responsible for the Soviet space programme to undertake a suicide mission: although a recent unmanned test flight ended in explosion, Leonov and his comrade Belyayev set off on a journey into the hazards of deep space dependent on technology that had yet to be perfected.

A suspense-packed space drama shot in soft retro colours, with popular actors Yevgeny Mironov playing Aleksey Leonov and Konstantin Khabensky as Pavel Belyayev. The production, which provides an at once both critical and sympathetic portrait of the Brezhnev era, proved a huge success in Russia, requiring only a matter of weeks to recoup its production costs. WMH