The Dish

The Dish (2000) is an Australian comedy-drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Rob Sitch and based on true events. In July 1969, a radio telescope sitting in a sheep paddock outside Parkes, New South Wales, becomes the world's only relay point for live footage of the Apollo 11 moonwalk.

The four-man team running the dish — led by station director Cliff Buxton, played by Sam Neill — has to pull this off with power outages, high winds, and a set of navigation errors that could have derailed everything. A NASA liaison watches from the side, unconvinced. The town mayor schedules receptions. The scientists just try not to lose the moon. The film picked up the Audience Award at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2000.

It's warmer and funnier than its premise might suggest, with an understated pride in the kind of competence that history forgets to credit. Stream The Dish online on iFILM.