First to the Moon 2018

Around 2000, a group of journalists digs into a highly secret document and uncovers a sensational claim: before the Second World War, in 1938, the Soviet Union allegedly built the first rocket and hatched a plan to send an orbiter to the Moon and back. The evidence feels convincing, suggesting that Soviet crewed lunar ambitions could have eclipsed the American race to the Moon. The film weaves together investigative grit with a chilling sense of historical what-ifs, painting a picture of a hidden chapter in space exploration that challenges widely held narratives.

The narrative then narrows to the people who would have carried this audacious dream. A small group of cosmonauts is selected and trained, with one figure emerging as the standout, a commander named Captain Ivan Sergeyevich Kharlamov. His presence is described with the weight of a legend, and as the training culminates, he is fitted into a space suit and placed in the capsule as the rocket powers upward. For a moment, it seems the mission is poised to rewrite history, but contact with the spacecraft is lost almost immediately, leaving the outcome shrouded in mystery.

What follows is a meticulous unraveling of the program’s fate. The film leans into the sense of a vanished project, implying that the Soviet lunar effort dissolves in the late 1930s without a clear explanation—though it is presumed to have been swept up in Stalin’s purges. A web of suspicion tightens around Kharlamov and those connected to the program, with the NKVD appearing to conduct a criminal inquiry into what happened, and many involved, including Kharlamov himself, are shown as being in hiding.

Details about the mission’s trajectory grow hazy yet intriguing. It appears the capsule may have returned to Earth and landed in Chile, while Kharlamov himself traverses back toward the Soviet Union via routes through Polynesia and China, all while fearing capture. His wife is depicted as a bulwark of truth, offering cover during interrogations about his whereabouts. The story advances to place Kharlamov on the Mongolian steppes after the Battles of Khalkhin Gol, where he bears a severe traumatic brain injury. He receives psychiatric care in a sanatorium in Chita, but ultimately disappears from public view, and his wife moves on, later remarrying.

The film’s final act reorients around the only tangible remnants of the mission: film footage recovered from the Chilean landing site and archived with a museum. Two brief visual fragments anchor the conclusion: first, Kharlamov at the controls during the mission’s approach to the Moon; second, a lunar panorama showing either a direct ascent lander or capsule resting on the lunar surface, with what appears to be Kharlamov’s lunar EVA captured as stills for the cover. A concluding sequence then shows the remaining cosmonauts stepping through a hangar alongside the 1930s space program director, before the credits roll.

In a documentary frame, archival appearances anchor the narrative in living memory. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders appear as themselves, lending a tangible link to the era of early spaceflight and offering a contemporary lens on the film’s provocative premise. Their presence underscores the tension between recorded history and the documentary’s alternative history, inviting viewers to weigh what is remembered, what is inferred, and what remains unknown.

Throughout, the film maintains a measured, exploratory tone, balancing investigative rigor with a speculative core. It treats its shocking premise with restraint, ensuring that every claim is weighed against the period’s political climate and the available evidence. The result is a thoughtful, stripped-down meditation on ambition, secrecy, and the fragility of memory—an immersive experience that invites readers to consider a world in which a Soviet crewed lunar program might have not only existed, but altered the course of space exploration.