Paper Soldier

Promising young director Alexei German Jr. brings us back in time, to the days of the USSR space program. It’s 1961 and Daniel Pokrovsky, a medical officer in the Soviet Army, is serving in Kazakhstan, working with the first ever group of cosmonauts. He’s a married man, but still he can’t help himself from getting involved with the young Vera. Back in Moscow and the arms of his wife, Nina, Pokrovsky is torn between his friendship with the idealistic space cadets, and the knowledge that these men are expected to sacrifice their own lives for the nation. Yet, when Nina demands that he leaves his job, because it is immoral to risk the lives of humans, he decides to leave her instead. Pokrovsky goes back to Vera, the space program and his own impending doom.

Paper Soldier is a dramatic exposé of an era when technology was king, and the Space Race was more important than any individual. German Jr. takes us from Kazakhstan to Moscow, and then back again, to tell the story of a man who loves his country so much, it eventually breaks him.

Nordic Premiere