Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky • 1979 • Russian Federation
Andrei Tarkovsky’s final Soviet feature is a metaphysical journey through an enigmatic postapocalyptic landscape, and a rarefied cinematic experience like no other. A hired guide—the Stalker—leads a writer and a professor into the heart of the Zone, the restricted site of a long-ago disaster, where the three men eventually zero in on the Room, a place rumored to fulfill one’s most deeply held desires. Adapting a science-fiction novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Tarkovsky created an immersive world with a wealth of material detail and a sense of organic atmosphere. A religious allegory, a reflection of contemporaneous political anxieties, a meditation on film itself—STALKER envelops the viewer by opening up a multitude of possible meanings.
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Nostalghia
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky • 1983 • Russia, Italy
Starring Oleg Yankovsky, Erland Josephson, Domiziana GiordanoAndrei Tarkovsky’s brooding late masterpiece, the first of his features to be made outside of Russia, is a darkly poetic vision of exile. The director poured his feelings of homesick...