In 1988, Abdul Ahad Momand became the first — and still the only — Afghan to fly into space. On 9 August 2026, a short film about him will have its world premiere at the 79th Locarno Film Festival.

The film is Forgotten Spaceman, listed in Locarno's official programme under its Pashto title Hershewe Fazanawerd. It screens in the Pardi di Domani – Concorso Internazionale, a competition strand dedicated to emerging voices in short-form cinema. The Hollywood Reporter broke the story.

London-based Afghan filmmaker Elham Ehsas wrote, directed and edited the piece. It blends documentary and essay filmmaking to trace a line between Afghanistan's space history and his own family's past — a connection Ehsas uncovered during the project's development. The synopsis describes the film as examining "shadows of colonialism and the memory of a fractured and silenced nation." The Hollywood Reporter

This is Ehsas's first documentary. His previous work spans shorts including There Will Come Soft Rains, Yellow and Our Kind of Love.

Momand's story gives the film its gravity. He launched aboard Soyuz TM-6 to the Mir space station on 29 August 1988, spending roughly nine days in orbit as an Interkosmos research cosmonaut — a Soviet programme that sent crew members from allied and partner nations into space. During the mission, Momand spoke with Afghan president Mohammad Najibullah, making Pashto the fourth language ever spoken beyond Earth, after Russian, English and Mandarin. The Hollywood Reporter

No Afghan has gone to space since.

Momand died in June 2026 at the age of 67 from cancer, according to collectSPACE. The Locarno premiere comes less than two months after his death.

Behind the film, the credits carry notable names. Catherine Tschaepe and Jack Thomas-O'Brien of Sixteen Films — the production company founded by director Ken Loach — serve as executive producers. World sales and festival bookings are handled by María Vera of Kino Rebelde. The film is a United Kingdom–Afghanistan co-production, with copyright credited to Foreigner Ltd, per the Locarno Film Festival's official programme page. A trailer for the film was released on 5 August, premiered exclusively by The Hollywood Reporter.

What makes the project resonate beyond the festival circuit is the collision of scales it holds. A single man, nine days in orbit, a language spoken for the first time off-world — set against the long sweep of a nation's fractured memory. Ehsas folds his own family into that history, and the result is a film about who gets remembered and why.

Locarno, one of the world's oldest film festivals, runs each August on the shores of Lake Maggiore in southern Switzerland. Its Pardi di Domani strand — "Leopards of Tomorrow" — has served as a launching pad for short and medium-length work since the 1990s.