ANDREI RUBLEV

Tracing the life of a renowned medieval icon painter, the second and grandest feature by Andrei Tarkovsky vividly conjures the murky world of 15th century Russia. This dreamlike and remarkably tactile film follows Andrei Rublev as he passes through a series of poetically linked scenes—snow falls inside an unfinished church, naked pagans stream through a thicket during a torchlit ritual, a boy oversees the clearing away of muddy earth for the forging of a gigantic bell—gradually emerging as a man struggling mightily to preserve his creative and religious integrity. Screening here in the director's preferred 183-minute cut, the masterwork ANDREI RUBLEV is one of Tarkovsky's most revered films, an arresting meditation on art, faith, and endurance.

"You may dread being ground down by this extraordinary film, but fear not. It will bear you aloft." - Anthony Lane, New Yorker

"Perfection lingers in each frame as Tarkovsky crafts one of the finest films ever made, an ecstatic story about art that has little interest in the artist himself, but in the power of art to transcend the age that produces it." - Jamie Russell, BBC

"It is not a film that needs to be processed or even understood, only experienced and wondered at." - Steve Rose, Guardian