TARKOVSKY

97 min | Russian | Documentary Andrey A Tarkovsky

Director Andrey Tarkovsky, left us with only eight films. The documentary recounts Tarkovsky’s life and work, letting the director in rare audio recordings, tell the story himself, as he shares with us his memories, his view of art and his reflections on the destiny of the artist and the meaning of human existence. The film is accompanied by recordings of poems by Arseny Tarkovsky, the director’s father. Arseny’s poetry had always had an influence on Andrei’s movies, underlining the profound cultural and spiritual bond between father and son. The film is made up of excerpts taken from the director’s works, rare contemporary photos and videos and sections shot in the places where Tarkovsky lived and made his movies, in Russia, Sweden and Italy, his adoptive home.

FESTIVALS & AWARDS

Venice Film Festival

Venice Classic

Telluride

IDFA

CPH:DOX

Hong Kong International Film Festival

International Film Festival of India – GOA

Sao Paulo IFF

Docaviv International Documentary Film Festival

RIDM Montreal

Cinema Vérité

Ljubljana Documentary Film Festival

ZagrebDox

Midnight sun festival

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival

PRESS QUOTES

“A masterpiece could be a manifestation of a soul passing next to you and clearly going upward, somewhere skyward, sweeping beside you, and leaving behind just a breath of wind for you to feel…”

Andrey Tarkovsky

“My father didn’t even like his films”

Andrei A Tarkovsky

Director of Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer

“Rather than a biopic, Tarkovsky’s son compiles a documentary that draws from his father’s statements to narrate his artistic life. Unlike most documentaries, there are no interviews or voice-over narrations. The only voice we hear (together with Arseniy Tarkovsky’s poetries read by him) is Tarkovsky, as he explains his experience and his artistic concepts and his cinematographic evolution. If you like Tarkovsky, make sure you see this!”

COME-AND-REVIEW

10/10, 7 July 2020, A deep dive in Tarkovsky’s spiritualism

“Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer is a timely reminder of what defying the state for art once meant.”

“Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer was made by Tarkovsky’s son, Andrey A. Tarkovsky. He allows his father to comment on his approach to filmmaking and his conception of the artist entirely in his own words, gathering recordings together with archival footage of him on set, and clips from his masterpieces. As a tribute, it is clearly a very personal labour of love, but that does not prevent it from having wider concerns to convey, in the form of the principles that meant everything to the director and were the key to his imagery of such authenticity.”

MODERN TIMES

https://www.moderntimes.review/art-in-spite-of-the-state/

“In Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer, shown in Venice Classics at the Venice Film Festival, Andrei A Tarkovsky, son of a certain Andrey Tarkovsky, doesn’t do “talking heads”, nor does he invite an endless parade of experts and aficionados to talk about his father’s films. Instead, he just allows him to speak for himself, courtesy of hours and hours of recordings in which he analyses his own work. So thoroughly does he do this that it would undoubtedly bring any college student to tears..”

CINEUROPA

https://cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/377134/

PRESS IMAGES

Credits

DIRECTOR

Andrey A Tarkovsky

Producer

Andrey A. Tarkovsky

Dmitry Klepatski

Peter Krupenin

Paolo Maria Spina

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Alexey Naidenov

Editing

Michał Leszczyłowski

Andrey A. Tarkovsky

Associate Producers

Anthony Muir

Katarina Krave

PRoduced by

Andrey Tarkovsky

International Institute, Italy/Russia

Klepatsky Productions, Russia

HOBAB, Sweden

Revolver, Italy