One Flew over the Kremlin – Mathias Rust & the End of the Soviet Bloc / Der Kremlflieger – Mathias Rust & die Landung auf dem Roten Platz (2012)

 

(Documentary by Gabriele Denecke, TV, 45/ 52 min, HD. A Gebrueder Beetz Filmproduktion in coproduction with HR and Saarländischer Rundfunk, funded by the Hessische Filmförderung.)

In 2011, I translated the voiceover texts of this documentary about Mathias Rust's historic flight, a flight that was instrumental in ending the First Cold War because it gave Gorbachev justified grounds for dismissing much of the USSR's old hardliners, many of whom were the strongest opponents to his reforms.

One Flew over the Kremlin was broadcast for the first time on ARD in 2012, 25 years after Rust "breached the integrity of the Iron Curtain" and left "the reputation of the military in tatters".

To simply rewrite the description of the documentary found on the website of GlobalScreen, the film's distributor: "It is the height of the cold war. Reagan and Gorbachev meet in Reykjavik to discuss nuclear disarmament, but the talks between the superpowers stall. This worries 17-year-old Mathias Rust, who has been following the news from his parent's home in West Germany. He resolves to do something about it. Rust, a member of the local aerosports club who has only fifty flying lessons under his belt, decides to fly to Moscow and try to meet with Gorbachev. On the 28th of May, 1987, he departs from Helsinki and enters the heavily secured airspace on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The Soviet military immediately begins tracking him, missile units are put on alert, a Soviet MiG-23 fighter-interceptor pulls up beside him — and lets him continue flying unhindered. On 'Border Guards Day', the day honoring the brave men and women faithfully guarding Russia's borders, Rust not only breaches all national boundaries but makes it to Red Square. Having taxied and parked his plane, he chats with curious onlookers while waiting for his arrest. Taken into custody by the KGB, he is charged with illegal entry, violation of flight laws, and malicious hooliganism.*

One Flew over the Kremlin draws on interviews with witnesses, relatives, and former Soviet military members as well as archival material to document Rust's flight across the USSR, his arrival in Moscow, and the aftermath: the court case and sentence, his parent's visit in prison, his return to his home town, and the ensuing collapse of Soviet Russia."

Trailer:

One Flew over the Kremlin – Mathias Rust and the End of the Soviet Bloc from gebrueder beetz filmproduktion on Vimeo.

* "Rust pleaded guilty to all but the last charge. There was, he argued, nothing malicious in his intentions." [Air&Space]