From Shakespeare to Solaris: Estonia’s Jüri Järvet burst onto the international scene in the 1970s with a series of performances of unusual intensity. From the title role in Grigorii Kozintsev’s daring vision of King Lear, to some of the biggest cult titles in Baltic film history, and Andrei Tarkovsky’s sci-fi classic, Järvet lit up the Soviet screen for more than a decade.

This exclusive video essay is based on an essay originally written by Samuel Goff and published on the Klassiki Journal.