Andrei Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer is a documentary film directed by Andrei A. Tarkovsky, son of the famous Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. It is a deeply personal and introspective work, made 33 years after the director's death, which offers a rare and authentic insight into Tarkovsky's thought, spirituality and artistic conception.
The film is constructed exclusively from Andrei Tarkovsky's authentic audio and video recordings, together with excerpts from his films, personal photographs, letters and poems (including those of his father, the poet Arseny Tarkovsky). The narrative voice is Tarkovsky's own, giving the movie a profound intimacy - as if the director is telling his own story from beyond time.
This is not a classic biographical documentary, but a spiritual cinematic essay, in which Tarkovsky explains in his own words his faith, his vision of art, the meaning of suffering, the importance of memory and the role of the filmmaker as a servant of truth. The film paints a profound picture of a life dedicated to beauty and the search for God through cinema.
Key themes:
- Faith and Cinema - Tarkovsky saw film as prayer, an act of contemplation and spiritual sacrifice.
- Memory and Suffering - his childhood memories and his artistic exile are linked with excerpts from films such as The Mirror, Nostalgia, Sacrifice.
- Poetic legacy - the movie includes the poems of his father, Arseny Tarkovsky, recited with music by Bach and Pergolesi.
- The search for truth - Tarkovsky emphasizes that the artist should not create for success but to express the truth of the soul.
Premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2019, the film has been praised for its depth and is considered a unique cinematic testament to one of the most influential filmmakers in history.
