Northwest Film Forum

"Think it was Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin? Well, think again, because as Alexei Fedorchenko's unsettling debut film reveals, a Soviet cosmopilot, Ivan Kharlamov, actually went there and back in 1938. He piloted his experimental, and highly secretive craft to the moon, returning to the Earth in Chile, from where he undertook an arduous journey across the Pacific, through China and Mongolia and finally into Mother Russia itself. FIRST ON THE MOON is a touching expression of unfettered utopian spirit - a sense of the limitless possibilities of human ingenuity and imagination - that characterized many people's vision of the Soviet experiment before its grim realities settled in. -Kent Jones

FIRST ON THE MOON won Best Documentary at the Venice Film Festival, despite the faux content.

"Fedorchenko's first feature is a crafty mock documentary positing a super secret Soviet space landing that predates the American giant leap by thirty years. Mixing real and phony archival footage, and fictitious present-day interviews with one of the figures involved in the project, First on the Moon is part intriguing, textured experiment in the ersatz, part spoof of Soviet propaganda films, and part sinister drama of Stalin-era repression." -George Kaltsounakis "Inventive, slickly made... While Western audiences may chuckle at the deftly executed mimicry of Soviet kitsch, viewers from Eastern Europe will feel the darker undertow." -Leslie Felperin, Variety