Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky • 1983 • Italy/USSR/Russia

The first film that Andrei Tarkovsky made outside of the Soviet Union, Nostalghia is one of the great director’s most wistful and intimate features. Co-written with Antonioni collaborator Tonino Guerra, the story explores the sense of dislocation and spiritual unease experienced by a Soviet writer (Oleg Yankovsky) visiting Italy on a research trip, where he encounters a local eccentric (Erland Josephson) who harbours premonitions of the apocalypse. With his typical visual elegance and philosophical perspective, Tarkovsky mines his own predicament for cinematic gold. As he later wrote: “How could I have imagined that the stifling sense of longing that fills the screen space in that film was to become my lot for the rest of my life?”

NOSTALGHIA
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
Written by Andrei Tarkovsky and Tonino Guerra
Cinematography by Giuseppe Lanci
Starring: Oleg Yankovsky as Andrei Gorchakov, Erland Josephson, Domiziana Giordano

In Russian and Italian with English subtitles

Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes Film Festival 1983