Per Aspera Ad Astra

Richard Viktorov’s newly restored cult classic is one of the most striking Soviet sci-fi features. Scripted by the beloved author Kir Bulychyov, Per Aspera Ad Astra (alternative name: To the Stars by Hard Ways) blends childlike wonder at the cosmos with the cynicism of the Brezhnev era. Elena Metyolkina is iconic as Niya, a beautiful cyborg who requests Earth’s help to salvage her home planet of Dessa, which environmental disasters have later revealed to be the work of rapacious human colonists. This idiosyncratic genre piece ponders both human and non-human life, probing mankind’s capacity to traverse the stars and its destructive potential, with the scenes of devastation on Dessa recalling Soviet environmental disasters in Chernobyl and the Aral Sea.