A Russian actress and director arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday to begin a 12-day mission to make the first movie in orbit.
The Russian crew is set to beat a Hollywood project that was announced last year by "Mission Impossible" star Tom Cruise together with NASA and Elon Musk's SpaceX.
They docked at the ISS, behind schedule at 1222 GMT, after veteran cosmonaut and captain of their spacecraft, Anton Shkaplerov, switched to manual control.
"Welcome to the International Space Station," Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitsky tweeted from the ISS.
The movie's plot, which has been mostly kept under wraps along with its budget, centres around a female surgeon who is dispatched to the ISS to save a cosmonaut.
Konstantin Ernst, the head of the Kremlin-friendly Channel One TV network and a co-producer of the film, said he spoke with the crew as soon as they docked.
- 'It was difficult' -
Shipenko and Peresild are expected to return to Earth on October 17 in a capsule with Novitsky, who has been on the ISS for the past six months.
If successful, the mission will add to a long list of firsts for Russia's space industry.
"Space is where we became pioneers, where despite everything we maintain a fairly confident position," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday.
Its space agency is still reliant on Soviet-designed technology and has faced a number of setbacks, including corruption scandals and botched launches.
- Russians 'lost interest' -
For political analyst Konstantin Kalachev, the space film is PR and a way to "distract" Russians from the "problems" that Roscosmos is facing.
In a bid to spruce up its image and diversify its revenue, Russia's space programme revealed this year that it will be reviving its tourism programme to ferry fee-paying adventurers to the ISS.
Last month, SpaceX completed the first all-civilian mission to space that took four untrained astronauts on a three-day loop around the Earth's orbit.
Later this month, 90-year-old actor William Shatner, known for his portrayal of Captain Kirk in the Star Trek series, will fly to space on a mission with Bezos's Blue Origin.