Wonderful character development!

not horrible nor great

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

While this documentary promised a deep look into a deal between Yugoslavia and the United States to transfer space technology to NASA, there is not enough new information presented to even fill a short magazine article. Most of the film is padded with stories about Yugoslavia's history, Tito and a single scientist from Yugoslavia who travels back to his home country for the first time in 50 years.What little information is presented comes from an American historian who seems to be the only one in the documentary who speaks English. Subtitles are needed for most of the interviews in this film.In any event, if you want to see a documentary that gives a passing mention to the Yugoslavian space program and more of a backstory into US-Yugoslavian relations from the 1960's to 1970's you may enjoy this. Beyond the first 30 minutes or so don't expect to learn much about NASA, the space program or what this title is supposed to focus on.

First have to give comment that in here the author did not type names all of the protagonists. It would be good that he/she mentioned all, as for example are Ivan Pavic and his daughter. Finally I saw it and in it all is for me more than "docu-fiction". For sure many of those things really happened in that period, what is shown in that some around hour and a half. It is the truth picture how it can be when someone who is poor, without any cent in his pocket, is gambling with the big and rich players, who have not only the money, but also all needed tools, but maybe not all needed knowledge. Generally speaking, from seeing this material you ask yourself, is it worth to sell the knowledge and how much is it worth? In that situation, you never think about what consequences will appear and in what shape and in what measure. The people of ex Yugoslavia survived that and know very well how it can be.

I enjoyed this movie, probably because being from the region and living through the demise of Yugoslavia I was left with so many unanswered questions. I am not sure if this movie answers them in the most truthful way, but it tries to give a plausible scenario. To counterpoint the previous review, this movie to me was foretelling the saying "if you play with the wolf you'll end up being eaten". There is no argument that Tito's charisma was not an equal match for American imperialism. If anything, he and his little country were the mouse that USA needed to play with in order to match up with the Soviet space program, if this story has any historical merit. Therefore, I felt that there were few essential questions still left out and that the movie was trying to play it safe and appeal to western audiences as a political thriller rather than a historical documentary. The main story of an engineer going back to Yugoslavia after living in the USA for 5 decades and meeting his daughter contained few inconsistencies and seemed over dramatized. The interesting commentator/narrator role of Zhizhek was also a bit over the top while offering simplistic analysis. I kept wondering "why isn't he wearing shoes" and "he needs a new pair of socks" throughout his energetic delivery. Nevertheless, I enjoyed all the documentary footage of Tito since for the first time I was looking at him as if he was an ordinary person. And I felt compassion towards him, even though this time I wasn't obliged to do so by the regime. Maybe after seeing other regimes fail in even more humiliating ways I realized the tough job he was trying to do. And this is the ultimate value of this docudrama.

This movie is really an amazing peace of work. I took everything it told me as truth and let it create certain feelings. At the end I went back to an assumption that it is fabricated but the feelings remained very solid and suddenly a lot of other information about the past started to fill in the gaps where fabrication was removed. Everything started to make more sense. It was not a pleasant discovery. It's one thing to feel as a victim of some powerful force, but to finally realize your own active role in the abuse, I think it is even harder to accept. Every movie, no matter what genre, is some type of manipulation and an attempt from author to present his own illusion. This movie seems like it is an illusion constructed to deliver the truth, indirectly.