While it’s not exactly new, director Alexey Fedorchenko’s First on the Moon – a mock-documentary about a secret Soviet cosmonaut program in the 1930s – is quite a statement both on Russia’s once-grand lunar ambitions and the division of state and individual during the country’s communist era.

Shot mostly in grainy black and white, Fedorchenko’s film follows the exploits of pilot-turned-cosmonaut Ivan Kharlmov, who along with three other heros of the CCCP (another pilot, a female athlete and a circus midget) train for what is ultimately the first manned space mission in 1938. Kharlmov wins out and launches to the Moon in 1938, then returns to a crash landing in Chile and crosses the Pacific Ocean and much of Asia with the NKVD (Communist Secret Police) on his tail.

The film premiered in Russia last September at the Venice Film Festival, where it went on to win the Horizons Documentary Prize despite its faux subject matter. I got a chance to see it here with Fedorchenko – and a bunch of other people to be sure – during a Saturday screening with the Museum of Modern Art’s New Directors series.

First on the Moon is a fantastic piece of what-if, even if Fedorchenko’s main goal is to explore how the Soviet Union built up heroes of the people only to tear them down again.

“I was fascinated with the history of my country and my people, which is why I wanted use this subject,” Fedorchenko said of human spaceflight, adding that 5% of the film is taken from actual state-collected footage.

The Soviet Union did usher in the era of human spaceflight with Yuri Gagarin’s April 12, 1961 launch and indeed had a Moon program linked to its massive N-1 rocket which exploded in each of four test launches. But First on the Moon posits that the USSR accomplished much more than orbital flight, and much, much earlier. In Fedorchenko’s world, however, the mission is deemed a failure and the NKVD go to extraordinary lengths to erase its existence.

The result is a seamless, darkly amusing 75-minute tale of Kharlmov’s rise through the aviation ranks to his ultimate spaceflight, all of which is surrounded in mystery and intrigue. Not bad for a script found through an Internet posting agency. There are likely in jokes for those familiar with Russian history beyond human spaceflight, though I admit they were likely lost on me.

But for anyone with a penchant for space history, science fiction and alternate realities, First on the Moon is worth the $12 the art-house theatre ticket. So look out if you’re in Hong Kong on April 12 (a coincidental anniversary) or in the Netherlands on April 22. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait until the Russian fantasy film festival hits New York in August.