Prisoners Of The Moon

The unbelievable true story of Arthur Rudolph, one of over one hundred Nazi V2 rocket engineers secretly brought to America in 1945 to work on the Cold War missile programme.

In 1969, Arthur Rudolph had been the much-honoured lynchpin of the first moon landing.

21 years later, he was arrested for war crimes.

Prisoners of the Moon tells the unbelievable true story of Arthur Rudolph, one of over one hundred Nazi V2 rocket engineers secretly brought to America in 1945 to work on the Cold War missile programme. Rudolph became a key figure in NASA’s race into space, but in 1990 was detained in Toronto on suspicion of being a war criminal.

As well as dramatising Rudolph’s trial from previously unseen transcripts, this revelatory documentary draws upon archive footage, expert witness interviews and the testimony of Jean Michel, a slave labour survivor of the subterranean wartime V2 factory.  The film tells a story of America’s desperation to beat Russia to the moon at all costs, and of the decades-long journey to bring to justice those responsible for the deaths of 20,000 slave labourers in the V2 rocket factory and its concentration camp.

50 years after the Apollo 11 mission, Johnny Gogan and Nick Snow’s documentary tells the hidden horror story behind the NASA space programme, and of the only former Nazi to be stripped of his American citizenship and deported.

Released in the UK in July 2019

  • Director: Johnny Gogan
  • Year: 2019
  • Duration: 75 mins.
  • Cert: 15
  • Genre: Documentary, Drama
  • Production company: Bandit Films

Official website

“Has a heft that’s given an eerie quality by fine performances, thoughtful direction and a creepy soundtrack by Steve Wickham.”

Leslie Felperin
The Guardian

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