In the Shadow of the Moon (2007 film)

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  In the Shadow of the Moon arrived at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival carrying ten first-person accounts of what it felt like to leave Earth behind. The film won the World Cinema Audience Award at Sundance, then opened to limited release in the United States on the 7th of September 2007. It was directed by David Sington, a British filmmaker, and it posed a question that audiences had rarely been asked to sit with so directly: what did the men who traveled to the Moon actually think about what they had done?

  The film draws on footage NASA had not opened in over thirty years, material that had to be sourced and remastered in high definition before anyone could watch it with fresh eyes. It also draws on something rarer still: candid interviews with ten Apollo astronauts, men who witnessed the late 1960s and early 1970s Moon missions from inside the spacecraft. How did they describe the experience? And what happens when a society tries to reckon, decades later, with something it achieved and then largely moved on from?

• 2. Who Agreed to Speak

  ›

  Ten of the twenty-four men who reached the vicinity of the Moon agreed to sit for the camera. That number is precise and telling. Some astronauts had already died by the time filming began. Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the lunar surface, chose not to participate. His absence is itself a kind of statement.

  The ten who did appear represent every crewed Apollo flight except Apollo 7, which never left Earth orbit. Eight of the twelve men who actually set foot on the lunar surface are among the interviewees. Jim Lovell and Michael Collins, both of whom orbited the Moon without landing, also appear. Collins flew as Command Module Pilot on Apollo 11, circling overhead while Buzz Aldrin and Armstrong descended. Lovell commanded Apollo 13, the mission that famously did not land. Charles Duke served as the Apollo 11 Capsule Communicator before flying to the surface himself on Apollo 16. Harrison Schmitt, who flew on the final crewed lunar landing, Apollo 17, rounds out the group alongside commander Eugene Cernan.

• 3. The Archive Unsealed

  ›

  The stock footage company Footagevault spent considerable effort locating and remastering film and media from the Apollo era, some of which had not been publicly accessible in over thirty years. That material forms the visual spine of the documentary. Audiences see mission footage that the astronauts themselves shot while traveling to and from the Moon.

  Archival news reports anchor the historical atmosphere of the period. Television broadcasters Walter Cronkite and Jules Bergman appear in that footage, their voices carrying the public's experience of watching the missions unfold in real time. Onscreen text appears occasionally to orient the viewer within the broader Apollo program timeline. The combination of newly remastered archival footage with the astronauts speaking directly to the camera decades later creates the film's central tension: memory laid against recorded evidence.

• 4. Critical Reception

  ›

  Roger Ebert called the film "spellbinding". On Rotten Tomatoes, it earned an approval rating of 95 percent from 113 reviews, with an average score of 7.90 out of 10. Metacritic calculated a weighted average of 84 out of 100 based on 34 critics, a threshold that site labels "universal acclaim".

  Entertainment Weekly gave it an "A" rating. The Los Angeles Times described it as a "fresh and compelling film, made with intelligence and emotion". The Hollywood Reporter concluded that its value, not only to current audiences but to future generations, was "simply enormous". Ron Howard, credited on screen as presenting the film, was involved in its promotion but played no role in its production.

• 5. Awards and Legacy

  ›

  In March 2008, In the Shadow of the Moon became the first film to win the Sir Arthur Clarke Award for Best Film Presentation. That award carries particular weight given Clarke's own stature as a writer who spent decades imagining human spaceflight before it became real.

  On the 23rd of June 2008, the Independent Investigations Group honored the film for promoting scientific skepticism in media. Producer Duncan Copp accepted that award on the film's behalf. The DVD release in the United States came on the 22nd of February 2008, with the United Kingdom release following on the 31st of March. A Blu-ray edition arrived on the 16th of June 2009, extending the film's reach to viewers who wanted to see the remastered NASA footage at its highest available resolution.