GAGARIN, I HAVE LOVED YOU

Director Valentina Rudenko was three years old when Juri Gagarin was the first man to venture into space. She is ten when he is killed in a plane crash. Like many others she was one of the cosmonaut’s admirers. Through the eyes of today she looks back at a time of euphoria and enthusiasm in the Soviet Union. She has sifted through huge numbers of archive material for her film to find images that differ from the cliché of the beaming space hero. She visited his widow Valentina Gagarina, who at the time of shooting was still living in the “star village” near Moscow, with a direct view of a monument for her husband. Apart from rare archive material the film shows the every day-life, combined with statements by contemporaries of Gagarin’s and the author herself.