Nostalghia

Essentially exiled due to the censorship of the Soviet Union, the great Andrei Tarkovsky set and shot his deeply personal, late masterpiece Nostalghia in Italy, never to return to his home country. In it, a Russian writer, accompanied by a beautiful interpreter, travels to Italy to research the life of an 18th century Russian composer who lived in Italy and committed suicide upon returning to Russia. Reflecting Tarkovsky’s own homesickness, the writer travels throughout the Tuscan countryside, longing to return to Russia only to be prevented by one detour after another. Tarkovsky’s alternatively monochrome and desaturated imagery heightens the profoundly melancholic tone of the film. (125 mins., 35mm)