Romanian astronaut Dumitru Prunariu comes to TIFF

On the second day of the festival, TIFF dedicates a special screening to Dumitru Prunariu, meant to celebrate 35 years since his first trip to space, on May 14, 1981. Dumitru Prunariu, the first Romanian astronaut, will be present at the screening of Operation Avalanche, directed by Matt Johnson (USA) and preceded by the short film Opt zile in Cosmos/ Eight Days in Space (from the Sahia Film archive).

The event takes place on Saturday, May 28, from 6:30 PM, at the Students’ Culture House. Prunariu was a member of the Soyuz 40 mission of the Inter-cosmos space program and spent 7 days, 20 hours and 42 minutes in space.

Operation Avalanche, directed by Matt Johnson (USA) and a Sundance 2016 premiere, recounts the events of 1967, when four undercover CIA agents were sent to NASA where they pretended to be the production team of a documentary film. The agents’ findings led to one of the biggest conspiracies in American history. Variety Magazine notes that “Arriving a full 17 years after “The Blair Witch Project,” “Operation Avalanche” demonstrates there’s still plenty of room left within the found-footage format to craft fresh, high-concept projects, regardless of the fact that no one’s falling for their alleged authenticity any longer. In this case, the artificiality actually compounds the joke, since the movie poses as a re-creation of one of the most infamous hoaxes of all time — although no one involved in its making believes those conspiracy theorists who claim that NASA lied about their widely televised 1969 moon landing.”