2163 A.D.: Ikarie XB-1 is not just a spaceship, it's a "cosmic town of forty people" on a journey out of our solar system to explore the Alpha Centauri system not just for a planet capable of sustaining life but for one in which they expect that life has indeed developed intelligently. Although the journey will last fifteen Earth years, only twenty-eight months will have elapsed on the ship due to time delineation. Not only does the crew have to deal emotionally with the reality that their loved ones will have aged significantly upon their return (one man whose pregnant wife had to stay on Earth will not get to meet his daughter until she is a teenager), but they also find that the passage of time accelerates in their interpersonal relationships on board (friendships and love affairs come and go quickly - with the older crew members viewing them on surveillance monitors like a soap opera - and popular hangouts are soon abandoned as if their interest has waned over years). As they drift further away from the Earth and into the other star system, they start to encounter the unknown, from an alien vessel to the bizarre, narcoleptic, paranoid, and physically harmful effects of a close encounter with a "dark star" that threatens their very sanity and possibly their survival.

Based on an early novel by Stanislaw Lem - author of SOLARIS (adapted by Andrei Tarkovsky and later Steven Soderbergh) - IKARIE XB 1 is an exquisite piece of Eastern European science fiction (so much so that the film was only re-edited by American International for its U.S. release of VOYAGE TO THE END OF THE UNIVERSE whereas some of their Soviet sci-fi pick-ups were salvaged only for their special effects shots with new stories and footage shot around them). The visual effects, set design, and performances are all of a high caliber, but it is the film's attention to the human aspect of the story that is most impressive. The interactions are sometimes immediate and emotional, and sometimes observed from a distance to surreal effect (if Fellini made a science fiction movie, he too would have indulged in such a rigidly choreographed - almost courtly - discotheque sequence and several of the dashing pans and tracking shots of twisted faces rushing towards the camera). That it lacks a spectacular laser battle ending is of little importance when the spirit of collaboration and cooperation - that made the exploratory journey (to connect with other life in the galaxy rather than to salvage resources) possible in the first place - is a stake.