TO THE STARS BY HARD WAYS (1981) (Church of Film)

Centuries in the future, the spacecraft Pushkin discovers a destroyed vessel floating in space. Its humanoid crew are all dead, except one young woman in a catatonic state. She is Niya, a cyborg human clone. On Earth, she struggles to remember the tragedy she endured. In space, she must confront that tragedy, and save her dying planet from capitalist exploitation and ecological destruction.

TO THE STARS BY HARD WAYS is one of the great classics of Soviet Sci-Fi Cinema, a sprawling, visually powerful epic about what it means to be, and to survive being, human. Model Yelena Metyolkina became a fashion icon due to the film’s popularity, and Alexey Rybnikov’s gorgeous ambient score made him a sensation after the film’s enormous success. This is the full, original cut of the film that is rarely seen.