Space Tourists
Space Tourists is a feature-length documentary of the Swiss director Christian Frei. The film had its premiere at the Zurich Film Festival in 2009 and has won the "World Cinema Directing Award" at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010. Plot. The documentary juxtaposes the journeys of extremely rich tourists traveling with the astronauts into space with the poor Kazakh metal collectors risking their lives in search for rocket waste fallen down into the plains once the Space Shuttle has left. Critics acclaimed this film for its breathtaking imagery and richness of insights. The film accompanies the first  female space traveler who was not a space agency employee, Anousheh Ansari, who paid US$20 million for her flight into space. The film shows the poor Kazakh metal collectors risking their lives in search for rocket waste that falls literally from the sky. The film features Magnum photographer Jonas Bendiksen, who has followed these metal collectors for a long time. Charles Simonyi, chief developer of Word and Excel, is seen at his space training and at his tasting of space food. Another protagonist of the film is Dumitru Popescu, an aerospace enthusiast who applied at the Google Lunar X -Prize of the X-Prize Foundation, founded by Anousheh Ansari. Reception. Christopher Campbell wrote on the official bloc of : Brad Balfour of the Huffington Post emphasizes that the film brings together the two sides of the medal: Ryan L. Kobrick, author from the magazine "The Space Review" liked the authenticity of the film: