Flight To Freedom: A Slovak Cyclist's Escape From Communism In A Hot Air Balloon

He had no experience flying a hot air balloon and no guarantee of surviving the flight. But 39-year-old international cycling champion Robert Hutyra did not let that stop him. In 1983, to escape from communist Czechoslovakia, Hutyra entrusted his own life, and that of his family, to a hot air balloon he had built himself, and flew into neighboring Austria. Flight To Freedom, a film by Current Time Digital video producer Mykola Nemchenko and RFE/RL multimedia coordinator Kateryna Oliynyk, is the story of how he did it.