Stanislaw Lem’s novel The Astronauts provide the basis for this sumptuously melodramatic, Polish-East German space adventure.

In the distant future of 1970, a cylinder containing a message from Venus has been discovered buried in the Gobi Desert. When attempts to contact that planet are met with silence, an international expedition of eight scientists is dispatched to find out more....

Their vessel for the journey is the eye-catchingly silvery ‘Cosmokrator’ and just as striking are the mixed gender, pan-ethnic crew; a Chinese linguist, a Japanese (female) doctor, an African communications officer, and to note, years before Star Trek.

A glossy production, filmed in Agfacolor and Total Vision (the GDR equivalent of Cinemascope), The Cosmokrator, and the alien landscape it touches down on, all melted cities and crystalline forests, are a triumph of production design.

Remember Tomorrow and the Cube are excited to bring this underrated gem to the big screen. This newly restored and subtitled version has been made possible by the DEFA Film Library. 

The Silent Star was the first science-fiction film brought out in East Germany and DEFA's first co-production with Poland.

“The first influential post-war space opera from Eastern Europe."

— Aurum Film