Space Tourists

Christian Frei’s absorbing film won the World Cinema Directing Award for Documentary at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. He follows the adventures of Iranian-American entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari, who became the first female space tourist in the world. Her childhood dream of space travel is made possible not by NASA, but the Russian Federal Space Agency. The cost of Ansari’s ten-day journey into space and onto the international space station is twenty million dollars, including a rough landing in the steppes of Kazakhstan.

Frei contrasts Ansari’s exhilarating ride into space with Kazakh scrap metal collectors hunting for rocket wreckage to sell on the black market. And he follows the next space tourist as he prepares for his journey. Raising many profound questions about the future of space travel, space exploration never seemed so strange and bizarrely beautiful.

After the screening, Frei and special guests will discuss the film and whether the future of space exploration will be left up to commercial market forces.

Join us for a complimentary reception following the event at 8:00 pm.

Copresenter: The Margaret Mead Film Festival
American Museum of Natural History Members receive Paley Member price.
Use code: margaretmead

Watch the trailer