The Prince Charles Cinema

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Mirror
1975 107mins Soviet Union (U) Drama
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky Starring Filipp Yankovskiy, Ignat Daniltsev, Margarita Terekhova

Using a nonlinear structure interlaced with dreams and flashbacks, director Andrei Tarkovsky creates a stream-of-consciousness meditation on war, memory and time that draws heavily on events from his own life.

Nostalgia [Nostalghia]
1983 125mins Italy, Soviet Union (15) Drama
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky Starring Domiziana Giordano, Erland Josephson, Oleg Yankovskiy

Andrei Tarkovsky’s unforgettably haunting film, his first to be made outside Russia, explores the melancholy of the expatriate through the film’s protagonist, Gorchakov, a Russian poet researching in Italy.

Arriving at a Tuscan village spa with Eugenia, his beautiful Italian interpreter, Gorchakov is visited by memories of Russia and of his wife and children, and he encounters the local mystic who sets him a challenging task.

‘Nostalgia’ is filled with a series of mysterious and extraordinary images, all of which coalesce into a miraculous whole in the film’s final shot. As in all Tarkovsky’s films, nature, the elements of fire and water, music, painting and poetry all play a major role.

★★★★ “Hauntingly beautiful” - David Parkinson, Empire

The Sacrifice
1986 148mins France, Sweden, UK (12A) Drama
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky Starring Allan Edwall, Erland Josephson, Susan Fleetwood

Andrei Tarkovsky’s visionary final film unfolds in the hours before a nuclear holocaust. Erland Josephson, in an award-winning role, plays retired actor Alexander who is celebrating his birthday with family and friends when a crackly TV announcement warns of an imminent nuclear catastrophe.

Alexander makes a promise to God that he will sacrifice all he holds dear, if the disaster can be averted. The next day dawns and, as if in a dream, everything is restored to normality. But Alexander must keep his vow.

Among many other awards, The Sacrifice won the Cannes Grand Prix in 1986, the same year that Tarkovsky died of cancer in Paris at the age of 54.

Solaris (1972)
1972 167mins Soviet Union (12A) Science Fiction
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky Starring Donatas Banionis, Jüri Järvet, Natalya Bondarchuk

A psychologist is sent to a station orbiting a distant planet in order to discover what has caused the crew to go insane.