MOSCOW, August 24. /TASS/. Klim Shipenko’s movie drama Challenge partially shot in outer space will be released to the general public in the spring of 2023, movie producer Eduard Iloyan announced at the Cinema Fund’s pitching on Wednesday.

"The film is in the process of its production and its release is scheduled for the spring of 2023," he said.

The movie production budget is estimated at 905 million rubles (about $15 million). The movie producers have requested the Cinema Fund to provide an additional 250 million rubles (about $4.16 million), he added.

"This is a high-budget movie and last year we requested a sum that we did not get in full. We have found working capital to finance it. A part of the film has not been shot yet. More footage has to be made during a launch at the Baikonur [spaceport]. This will be followed by a big post-production, which drives this [need for additional financing]," Iloyan added.

The Challenge is the first feature movie filmed in outer space aboard the International Space Station. The space drama is a joint project by the Russian space agency Roscosmos, TV Channel One and the movie studio Yellow, Black and White.

According to the plot, a woman doctor has to prepare for a space flight within a month owing to some specific circumstances and travel to the orbital outpost to save a cosmonaut’s life. On October 5, 2021, Roscosmos cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, actress Yulia Peresild and film director Klim Shipenko lifted off aboard a Soyuz MS-19 manned spacecraft to the International Space Station to shoot the film. Cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov who worked aboard the orbital outpost at that time also took part in the film’s shooting.

Novitsky, Peresild and Shipenko returned to Earth aboard the Yuri Gagarin descent capsule of a Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft on October 17, 2021. Shkaplerov and Dubrov returned to Earth from the space station on March 30.