Andrei Tarkovsky

Soviet and Russian film director, screenwriter, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director (1932–1986)

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Lived 1932–1986, aged 54

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Wikipedia
82 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1932–1986
Aged 54
Known for
Mirror
1975

Summary

Updated 2026-06-08

Soviet director whose seven films—slow, spiritual, built from long takes and light moving through water—are studied like scripture by people who think cinema can be more than entertainment.

Biography

About

Andrei Tarkovsky studied under Mikhail Romm at the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography and made his first five features in the Soviet Union between 1962 and 1979: Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, Mirror, and Stalker. Years of friction with state film authorities led him to leave the country in 1979; he completed two final films abroad, Nostalghia in 1983 and The Sacrifice in 1986. That same year he published Sculpting in Time, a book on cinema and art, and died of cancer possibly linked to toxic conditions on the Stalker set. He won the Golden Lion at Venice for Ivan's Childho…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky

said1986

For me the most interesting characters are outwardly static, but inwardly charged by an overriding passion.

— Sculpting in Time (1986)

Andrei Tarkovsky

said1986

I have to say from the outset that not all prose can be transferred to the screen.

— Sculpting in Time (1986)

Andrei Tarkovsky

said1986

I find poetic links, the logic of poetry in cinema, extraordinarily pleasing.

— Sculpting in Time (1986)

Andrei Tarkovsky

said1986

Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal: that longing which draws people to art.

— p. 38

Andrei Tarkovsky

said1986