Overview

Broadly influential to directors and idol to many adoring movie geeks, Andrei Tarkovsky made his last film in 1986 but his work is in the midst of yet another renaissance, in part due to this fresh high-definition restoration of his sci-fi classic. Aleksandr Kajdanovsky stars as the film’s namesake, the Stalker, who is a guide to a verboten post-apocalyptic wasteland called The Zone. The Stalker leads a professor (Nikolay Grinko) and a scientist (Anatoliy Solonitsyn) into the perils of the The Zone to find The Room, a mythical space said to grant any wish an inhabitant might have. Filled with Tarkovsky’s hallmark slow and gorgeous shots, Stalker sets up incredibly well for comparisons to recent prestige films, like The Revenant and Dunkirk, as well as a jumping board for big theological discussions.

Co-presented by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.