The film starts in 1961 with the arrival of Andrei and Stan, two young friends, to the newly built Star City, where the first cosmonauts train for space voyaging, where everyone is working agaisnt the clock to beat Americans in the Space Race. Stan and Andrei will live firsthand the power struggles, successes and failures of some of the 20th century’s greatest accomplishments in the majestic Soviet Union. They’ll meet Yulia, a communications technician with whom they’ll start a friendship that sometimes will be in the fringes of love.

Soon, each one of them will find their place. Stan will be a cosmonaut, an accident will keep Andrei in political positions. Both will be the main characters in a mission that today looks fictional, but that could had actually happen: a Russian mission to send a man to the Moon, using Chelomei’s alternative prototypes instead of Korolev’s flawed designs (with American help, who was collaborating with the USSR in the Apollo-Soyuz mission) It is October 1975. Stan readies himself to be the first Russian cosmonaut in the Moon. In the tense days before the launching, Stan thinks of Yulia, and so does Andrei. Two days after the launching the ship loses all communication with Earth. For seven months, Andrei and Yulia look for him restlessly. One day, the ship returns to Earth. There is no trace of the cosmonaut in it.

Confussion keeps growing when a series of radio transmission starts. Stan broadcasts from an unknown place He claims to be back on Earth, a completely empty Earth. Soon, a new, weirder and more dangerous triangle surges. Dreams start to merge with reality. Hallucinations become too real. Their relationship starts to be more intense and distant at the same time. Finally, the reunion takes place.

In 1957, the launch of a small metal ball called Sputnik started one of the most vibrant and inspiring times in the history of mankind:
The Space Race.

For 18 years, USA and the USSR fought for the supremacy of space. To be first. To go farther. To come back alive.

Each of the launches was a giant leap forward for humankind into the future. Deep into the unknown.

This incredible era of technical wonders and giant rockets of almost three thousand tons that majestically rise into the air, was what inspired us to set up our story of passions, jealousy and friendship.

Nowadays, thousands of people across the world keep looking at space as something mysterious and beautiful. Feeling a sense of respect each time they look up into the sky and affectionately remember Gagarin, the first human in space, Neal Armstrong stepping on the lunar surface for the first time, the Apollo XIII crew... But there are a lot more stories that have not been told yet.

In 1961 the Russian space agency built a city in the middle of a forest. For more than 30 years, it has remained hidden except to the families and workers that lived there. They were responsible for the Russian space program and there they trained the cosmonauts who would then traveled to the cosmos. They still do it to this very own day.

A thorough work based on books from experts and Kamanin diaries themselves, the chief of the cosmonauts for eleven years, took us to write a fiction script based on actual events.

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The Cosmonaut is the story of three characters surrounded by unforeseen events occured for more than fifteen years: success and failure, accidents, conspiracies, favouritism and secret missions. A unique depiction of an era as it has never been told.

Sputnik is a project carried out by the Spanish photographer Joan Fontcuberta. It tells the story of a cosmonaut lost in space. When his spacecraft goes back to Earth, there is no trace of the cosmonaut.

This premise was the one that ignited our imagination and lead to the screenplay.

We found out later that the legends about lost cosmonauts were endless.

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We'll never know if those legends are true, but The Cosmonaut is an exploration of the striking poetic image of the loneliness of a human being floating in cosmos a quarter million miles away from home.

Ballard's missing astronauts... the erratic steps of the scientists of Solaris ... There have been many inspiration sources for the script, but none of them was as deep as a small book we found at a bookstore.

A movie set in a city, An old secret city, opened nowadays to the public, but known by few.

A city where astronaus and cosmonauts have been training for more than fifty years.

A city that has remain unchanged since then.

Visiting Star City for the first time is almost a religious experience: the long park welcoming you at the entrance, the kids playing, Gagarin's house, the huge avenues and the particular work pace, that could be considered ordinary, if one didn't knew that each of that people works to send a man to space on a six million pounds rocket at five thousand miles per hour.

Star City remains unchanged since 1961, and it will be one of the movie's main sets

The rest of the locations will be set up between Moscow and Belarus

Breathless, Godard

2046, Wong Kar-Wai

Elephant, Gus Van Sant

Elephant, Gus Van Sant

Lancelot du lac, Bresson

Antichrist, Lars Von Trier

The Sacrifice, Andrei Tarkovski

Riot Cinema Collective

We are film lovers: we work with moving images, sound and design. We apply cinema concepts to every single thing we create (whether it be advertising, communication, design, film or breakfast).

We believe in: People over money. Cinema over money. Doing better than saying. Communication with our audience and clients as a “must do” among our “to do” list.

We like: risk and innovation in everything we do ("no play, no gain", we say). Change (we love plan B). Culture (better if it’s free). Our team.

And all of us form The Cosmonaut team.

"He is a producer, scriptwriter and director. At the age of 23, he has already written several feature film scripts, directed documentaries, short films and spots for the company he runs: Riot Cinema Collective. He likes to call himself a ""story-teller"", remarking that what matters are not the means, but engaging the audience. That's the reason why his last and most ambitious project, The Cosmonaut, is a transmedia project, creating a complex universe around a main feature film, that also means several narrative media and a commited audience. Anyhow, he likes to think that what talks about him is his work."