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Andrei Tarkovsky was born on April 4, 1932. His mother, Maria Ivanovna, was a talented actress, and his father, Arseniy Tarkovsky, a respected poet and translator. Both his parents have featured in his work-- his mother as an actress; and his father through the haunting poems which Andrei has used in several of his films.

When his parents separated, Andrei and his younger sister Marina continued to live with their mother. In 1939 his schooling in Moscow was interrupted; but he returned to the city in 1943. In addition to regular classes at school he bean to study music and drawing. In 1951 he joined the Moscow Institute for Oriental Languages, but he couldn't complete the course due to illness. In 1954 he successfully applied for admission to the prestigious All-Union State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow. Here Mikhail Ilych Romm became his most influential teacher. His friendship with Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky led to the joint script for The Steamroller and the Violin, Tarkovsky's debut film which earned him the degree at VGIK, and which already reveals significant elements typical of his later work. 

Tarkovsky's first major film was shown in Moscow in April 1962. Ivan's Childhood, based on a story by Vladimir Bogomolov (who was also involved in the filming), won the Golden Lion award in the very same year at the film festival in Venice. The international recognition following this success triggered off considerable ideological concern in his own country, which subsequently -- around the end of 1966, after the premiere of Andrei Rublyov, which was shown out of competition at the Cannes Festival in 1969 and won an award there , was cleared for export by the Soviet Film Department only in 1973. Similarly Mirror, an autobiographical film, which was completed in 1974 against strong bureaucratic resistance, reached west European cinema halls only years later. 

With Solaris (1971/72), based on a science fiction novel by Stanislas Lem, Tarkovsky touched upon a subject that was still relatively innocuous in the Soviet Union at the time--man forging ahead into space-- but even here his approach generated a long list of criticisms and objections. Stalker Tarkovsky's last film made in the Soviet Union, is based on Roadside Picnic, a story by the Strugatsky brothers. It deals with themes underpinning the world view of the director: the rift between natural science and belief, the future of mankind in view of current atomic threats; and, ultimately, the dim slimmer of hope still left to man. 

After a stage production of Hamlet in Moscow, Tarkovsky traveled to Italy in 1982 to shoot Nostalgia. A Soviet-Italian co-production, it is based on a script written jointly with the poet Tonino Gurerra. The them is , however, typical of the Russian dilemma: that of the artist abroad, smitten by homesickness, unable to live in his country or away from it -- a fate that befell Tarkovsky himself in the last years of his life. 

In the autumn of 1983 he staged Boris Godunov with great success at the Covent Garden Opera in London. A year and a half later, in 1986, his widely acclaimed book Sculpting in Time got published. Around the same time he was carrying on preparations for his last film form Berlin, where he was staying in 1985 on a fellowship from the German Academic Exchange Service: Sacrifice, often referred to as Tarkovsky's legacy. 

At the end of 1985, after completing the shooting of Sacrifice in Sweden, Andrei Tarkovsky returned to Rome, already afflicted by the disease to which he succumbed a year later, on December 29, 1986, at a Parisian cancer clinic. He is buried in a graveyard for Russian émigrés in the town of Saint-Genviève-du-Bois, France [click here for a picture of the grave].