Last year, film fans witnessed filmmaker Damien Chazelle’s vision of the mission of Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 crew as they attempted what was seemingly thought to be impossible – land on the surface of the moon. Of course, “First Man” was more interested in the psyche and life of Armstrong, and less on the nuts and bolts of the mission. But in the new documentary “Apollo 11,” director Todd Douglas Miller has a different mission in mind.
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The first trailer for the documentary shows that Miller isn’t just giving film fans yet another look at the Apollo 11 mission. Instead, he’s utilizing stunning, never-before-seen 70mm footage and more than 11,000 hours of uncatalogued audio recordings to give audiences a look at the moon landing that could be seen as just as cinematic and beautiful as what Chazelle and company did in “First Man.”
As you can see in the trailer, the footage that is recovered and remastered doesn’t look like some grainy news footage. No, this 70mm footage is beautiful and cinematic, looking like it was shot yesterday and not 50 years ago.
“Apollo 11” recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival but will be released by NEON and CNN Films later this year in theaters nationwide.
Here’s the synopsis:
From director Todd Douglas Miller (Dinosaur 13) comes a cinematic event fifty years in the making. Crafted from a newly discovered trove of 65mm footage, and more than 11,000 hours of uncatalogued audio recordings, Apollo 11 takes us straight to the heart of NASA’s most celebrated mission—the one that first put men on the moon, and forever made Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin into household names. Immersed in the perspectives of the astronauts, the team in Mission Control, and the millions of spectators on the ground, we vividly experience those momentous days and hours in 1969 when humankind took a giant leap into the future.