Андрей Арсеньевич Тарковский Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky
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Andrei Tarkovsky shot to international attention with his first feature Ivan’s Childhood 1962, winning the top prize at the Venice Film Festival. His second film Andrei Rublev 1966 was banned for two years but later won at Cannes. He defected to Europe after Nostalgia 1983 and made his final film The Sacrifice 1986 in Sweden, winning four Cannes prizes. He died of lung cancer later that year, aged 54.
Names, aliases, and relatives of Andrei Tarkovsky — birth name, kin, and personal ties.
Andrei Tarkovsky by the numbers — life, work, and family.
Andrei Tarkovsky — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.
After working as a prospector and spending a year in the taiga, Tarkovsky decided to study film. He was born in 1932 in Zavrazhe to poet Arseny Tarkovsky and Maria Tarkowska. He studied music and Arabic at the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow but dropped out to enroll at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography VGIK, where his teacher was Mikhail Romm.
Tarkovsky shot to international attention with his first feature Ivan’s Childhood 1962, which won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival. This resulted in high expectations for his second feature Andrei Rublev 1966, which was banned by the Soviet authorities for two years. It was shown at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival at four o’clock in the morning on the last day to prevent it from winning a prize, but it won nonetheless. Solaris 1972 had an easier ride, being acclaimed as the Soviet answer to Kubrick’s 2001. He ran into official trouble again with The Mirror 1975, a dense autobiographical work. Stalker 1979 had to be completely reshot on a reduced budget after laboratory accident destroyed the first version. After Nostalgia 1983, shot in Italy, Tarkovsky defected to Europe. His last film, The Sacrifice 1986, was shot in Sweden with many of Ingmar Bergman’s regular collaborators, winning four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival.
Tarkovsky was married twice: first to Irma Raush in 1957, with whom he had a son Arseniy; later to Larisa Tarkovskaya, with whom he had a son Andrei Andreevich. He also had a son Aleksandr with Norwegian costume designer Inger Pehrsson, born just before his death. His father Arseniy was a noted poet whose poetry features in Stalker and The Mirror. Tarkovsky, his wife Larisa, and collaborator Anatoliy Solonitsyn all died of lung cancer, likely from working near a chemical plant during the filming of Stalker.
Ingmar Bergman hailed Tarkovsky as the most important director of all time. A minor planet, 3345 Tarkovskij, was named after him in 1982. He was posthumously awarded the Lenin Prize in 1990. His book Sculpting in Time remains a landmark text on film theory. Retrospectives were held in Moscow shortly before his death.
Browse the complete filmography of Andrei Tarkovsky — every film, TV show, and documentary credit, ranked by popularity.
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Every award, honor, and recognition received by Andrei Tarkovsky — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.
Andrei Tarkovsky's bibliography — every authored, edited, and co-written book, ranked by edition count.
A wall of memorable lines from Andrei Tarkovsky — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.
My Purpose Is to Make Films That Will Help People to Live, Even If They Sometimes Cause Unhappiness.
Always with Huge Gratitude and Pleasure I Remember the Films of Sergei Parajanov Which I Love Very Much. His Way of Thinking, His Paradoxical, Poetical . . . Ability to Love the Beauty and the Ability to Be Absolutely Free Within His Own Vision.
The Only Condition of Fighting for the Right to Create Is Faith in Your Own Vocation, Readiness to Serve, and Refusal to Compromise.
Instead of Attempting to Capture These Nuances, Most Unpretentious ‘True to Life’ Films Not Only Ignore Them but Make a Point of Using Sharp, Overstated Images Which at Best Can Only Make the Picture Seem Far Fetched. and I Am All for Cinema Being as Close as Possible to Life Even If on Occasion We Have Failed to See How Beautiful Life Really Is.
So Much, After All, Remains in Our Thoughts and Hearts as Unrealized Suggestion.
I Think in Fact That Unless There Is an Organic Link Between the Subjective Impressions of the Author and His Objective Representation of Reality, He Will Not Achieve Even Superficial Credibility, Let Alone Authenticity and Inner Truth.
Cinema Is an Unhappy Art as It Depends on the Money. Not Only Because a Film Is Very Expensive but Is Then Also Marketed Like Cigarettes, Etc.
The Director’s Task Is to Recreate Life, Its Movement, Its Contradictions, Its Dynamic and Conflicts. It Is His Duty to Reveal Every Iota of the Truth He Has Seen, Even If Not Everyone Finds That Truth Acceptable. of Course an Artist Can Lose His Way, but Even His Mistakes Are Interesting Provided They Are Sincere. for They Represent the Reality of His Inner Life, of the Peregrinations and Struggle into Which the External World Has Thrown Him.
Movement Is Made More Meaningful in the Context of Stillness.
The Longer I Work in Cinema the More Convinced I Am That This Domain of Art Is Not Ruled by Any Laws. I Do Not Even Attempt to Find Them. Everything Is Possible.
Cinema Should Capture Life in the Forms in Which It Exists and Use Images of Life Itself. It Is the Most Realistic Art Form in Terms of Form. the Form in Which the Cinematic Shot Exists Should Be a Reflection of the Forms of Real Life. the Director Has Only to Choose the Moments He Will Capture and to Construct a Whole Out of Them.
The Artist Has a Right to Any Fiction; That’s Why He’s an Artist. He Does Not Misrepresent His Depiction as the Truth of Life. He Battles Only for the Truth of the Problem and the Truth of the Conclusions Which He Presents. and the Fact That Art Is Based on Fiction Is Proven Loudly by Its Entire History, from Its Very Sources.
I Think That by Concealing the Shadowy Aspects of Life It Is Impossible to Reveal Deeply and Fully What Is Beautiful in Life. All the Processes Occurring in the World Are Born from the Battle Between Old and New, Between What Has Died and What Is Accumulating Strength for Life. and the Cinema, Like Any Other Art, Is Mostly Interested in This Process: Life in Its Movement.
Man Needs Man.
No Mother Gives Birth to the Same Child Twice.
Clearly the Hardest Thing for the Working Artist Is to Create His Own Conception and Follow It, Unafraid of the Strictures It Imposes, However Rigid These May Be… I See It as the Clearest Evidence of Genius When an Artist Follows His Conception, His Idea, His Principle, so Unswervingly That He Has This Truth of His Constantly in His Control, Never Letting Go of It Even for the Sake of His Own Enjoyment of His Work.
Perhaps Cinema Is the Most Personal Art, the Most Intimate. in Cinema Only the Author’s Intimate Truth Will Be Convincing Enough for the Audience to Accept
A Poet Is Someone Who Can Use a Single Image to Send a Universal Message
Why Do I Feel This Alone? Basically, Because I’ve Always Been Alone. I’ve Always Been Alone. and Alone I’ll Be. It’s About Time I Become Aware of It and Never Forget It.
Man Is Born Unto the Trouble as the Sparks Fly Upwards.’ in Other Words Suffering Is Germane to Our Existence; Indeed, How Without It, Should We Be Able to Fly Upwards
Little-known facts about Andrei Tarkovsky — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.
Children understood his films better than adults, Tarkovsky believed.
Admirer of Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman’s films; both later praised Tarkovsky’s own work.
Bergman called him the most important director of all time.
Tarkovsky, wife Larisa, and actor Anatoliy Solonitsyn all died of the same type of lung cancer from working near a chemical plant in Estonia during Stalker.
He wrote the book Sculpting in Time, discussing his views on cinema as an art and poetry in film.
In his last diary entry December 15, 1986, he wrote: But now I have no strength left – that is the problem.
His gravestone reads: To the man who saw the Angel.
In almost every film, there is a shot or sound of water dripping inside a building.
His ten favorite films include: Journal d’un curé de campagne, Mouchette, Nattvardsgästerna, Smultronstället, Persona, Nazarín, City Lights, Ugetsu Monogatari, Shichinin no Samurai, and Suna no Onna.
He regarded Solaris as his least favorite of his own films, despite it being his most widely seen.
There is controversy about whether he was assassinated by the KGB.
At Cannes, he won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury three times, more than any other director, for Offret, Nostalghia, and Stalker.
He made 32 versions of The Mirror before approving the final cut.
He studied Arabic at the Oriental Institute in Moscow but dropped out.
His favorite filmmakers were Akira Kurosawa, Luis Buñuel, Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, Kenji Mizoguchi, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean Vigo, and Carl Theodor Dreyer.
Bergman said Tarkovsky is the greatest, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.
Despite opposing commercial cinema, he praised The Terminator for pushing cinematic boundaries.
Minor planet 3345 Tarkovskij, discovered in 1982, is named after him.
His father Arseniy’s poetry was used in Stalker and The Mirror.
Soviet film organizations expressed sorrow in obituaries that Tarkovsky spent his last years in exile.
He was also a film theorist, theatre and opera director.
Friend of Sergei Parajanov; both were VGIK graduates and met filmmaker Mikhail Vartanov.
Under Glasnost, a retrospective of his films was held in Moscow in Autumn 1986.
He is buried in the Orthodox Graveyard for Russian Emigrés in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, France.
He was a member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 1982.
In school, he was a troublemaker and poor student.
Parajanov dedicated his film Ashik Kerib to Tarkovsky.
He worked as a prospector for the Academy of Science and participated in a year-long expedition to the taiga, where he decided to study film.
Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Andrei Tarkovsky.
Celebrities similar to Andrei Tarkovsky — same craft, ranked by reach.
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