In 1957, the Russian film producer Pavel Klushantsev made a film called (in the US) Blazing a trail to the stars.
It should actually be called "Road to the stars".
The US special effect maker Robert Skotak contacted Pavel because that movie (made just at the time of the first Sputnik) fascinated him so much.
There are, in the Russian movie, so much of what we have lived about the conquest of space: how to get to LEO, build a space station (with spacesuited astronauts and in weightlessness) and a moon landing.
Klushantsev made many of the same special effects as Kubrick, only 10 years earlier......
He was largely ignored in the US (coming from the SU) and from 1972 on, his movies didn't interest the officials, so he was forgotten until Skotak saw one of his movies.
He made movies such as Planet of storms (or Planeta Burg). The scandal was that Roger Corman bought the movie for almost peanuts, changed the main actress (totally unknown in the US) and added bikini dressed "venusian" women , completely twisting an otherwise great movie.
Klushantsev made movie called The Moon, Mars, Meteors, Venus and used really good special effects for the time.
Unknown and not recognized because on the other side of the iron curtain.

Raoul