Film festival: Cosmonauts in Khrushchev’s Russia

The fresh idea behind Alexei German Jr’s Paper Soldier is the moral dilemma faced by a doctor to the first set of Soviet cosmonauts, back in 1961. Billed as ‘visually beautiful,’ it is certainly arresting, with majestic scenes in bleak, white Kazakhstan, but narratively it’s a morass. Nothing makes sense. The fact that half the yellow subtitles couldn’t be seen on the white scenery only added to my frustration. 1½ stars.