Apollo 11 Documentary Celebrates 50 Years Since Moon Landing

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!

Apollo 11 is the mission that first put men on the moon, and forever made Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin household names. It marks a pivotal moment in the US space race.

The film is directed by Todd Douglas Miller (“Dinosaur 13”) and is immersed in the perspectives of the astronauts, the team in Mission Control, and the millions of spectators on the ground.

Viewers vividly experience those momentous days and hours in 1969 when humankind took a giant leap into the future.

This film does an excellent job of transporting the viewer to the heart of the iconic Apollo 11 mission, making the audience feel like they are experiencing it for the first time.

Sharing those moments in the theater reminds us that the excitement of space exploration is a shared human experience. The filmmakers manage to recreate the heart-stopping excitement of launches and landings, as well as convey the difficult maneuvers, speeds, and the distance needed to explore space.

While the imagery may be 50 years old, the emotions of all those on the screen are timeless, and we feel along with them, years later.

Though five decades have past since the Apollo 11 mission, this film honors the accomplishment while making us yearn to capture that sense of exploration again and look onward to Mars.

The unique footage that has been included provides a new glimpse into an event and makes it feel like we’re seeing it for the first time.

The phrase “hidden figures” is especially poignant when reviewing this footage, as we do not see a glimpse of those many women whose stories we now know helped humanity reach this achievement.

This film is a great accomplishment of preserving history and conveying the shared human excitement of space exploration. We hope it spurs renewed excitement in the state of space exploration today!

In theaters, March 8th.

Reviewed by Erin Macdonald:

Erin is an astrophysicist and aerospace engineer with a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Glasgow (Scotland), having done her Bachelor’s at the University of Boulder (Colorado.) Erin’s specialty is general relativity, having previously worked in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration searching for gravitational waves.