MOSCOW, October 4. /TASS/. The members of the Vyzov (Challenge) film crew who will travel to the International Space Station (ISS) have acquired the necessary knowledge and skills for it yet still cannot be considered professional cosmonauts, the project’s director Klim Shipenko said at a TASS video press conference on Monday.

"Of course, we didn’t become cosmonauts in a sense represented by Anton [Shkaplerov] and Oleg [Artemyev]," the film director said. "We underwent an accelerated course of many important elements that the cosmonauts study over many years. We tried to master them in four months. Of course, this is very fast. We had a lot of theory, practice, endurance, sports - everything imaginable. It seems to me, this is a rather feasible task - naturally, not to become a cosmonaut at the level of Anton and other professionals but to prepare as a participant of a space flight," he explained.

Actress Yulia Peresild who has the starring role divulged that previously she hadn’t realized how much effort the preparation for the project would require. "This entire time we worked very hard. Despite our cheerful disposition and smiles, we got very tired," she noted. "Had I been told this once again, of course, I would have come here understanding the matter. But I still would come," the actress added.

The launch of the Soyuz-2.1A rocket carrier is scheduled for 11:55 Moscow time on October 5 from launch pad number 31 (Vostok/East) of the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Within roughly nine minutes, the spacecraft will reach orbit. Its approach to the ISS will follow a double-loop pattern. It will take the spacecraft about 3 hours and 17 minutes to reach the ISS.

Peresild and Shipenko are planning to film the first motion picture in space. The drama under the working title called Challenge is a joint project by Roscosmos, Channel One and the Yellow, Black and White studio. It is a movie about a doctor, who despite being unfamiliar with the sphere of outer space, is forced by circumstance to fly to space in order to save a cosmonaut’s life.