The documentary, which premiered this year at the Sundance Film Festival, opened in New York and Los Angeles last week and arrives in additional cities nationwide Friday.

The film features interviews with the astronauts and never-before-seen footage from NASA’s vaults. It won the World Cinema Audience Award for Documentary at Sundance.

The story of the Apollo space program begins in May 1961, with President Kennedy’s challenge in a speech to Congress: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

From 1968 to 1972, the men of Apollo met Kennedy’s challenge during a time when America was in a Cold War with the Soviet Union and the space program faced fierce competition from Moscow.

“The genius of Kennedy was to understand that a project like this would act as a rallying point for the nation and would also be a fantastic way of demonstrating to the world the value of American life,” said film director David Sington.