His films explore spiritual and metaphysical themes and are known for their slow pacing and long takes, dreamlike visual imagery and preoccupation with nature and memory.

[4][5] Tarkovsky studied film at the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography under filmmaker Mikhail Romm and subsequently directed his first five features in the Soviet Union: Ivan's Childhood (1962), Andrei Rublev (1966), Solaris (1972), Mirror (1975), and Stalker (1979).

[7] Andrei Tarkovsky was born in the village of Zavrazhye in the Yuryevetsky District of the Ivanovo Industrial Oblast (modern-day Kadyysky District of the Kostroma Oblast, Russia) to the poet and translator Arseny Aleksandrovich Tarkovsky, a native of Yelysavethrad (now Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine), and Maria Ivanova Vishnyakova, a graduate of the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute who later worked as a proofreader; she was born in Moscow in the Dubasov family estate.

She was married to Ivan Ivanovich Vishnyakov, a native of the Kaluga Governorate who studied law at the Moscow State University and served as a judge in Kozelsk.

[9][10] According to the family legend, Tarkovsky's ancestors on his father's side were princes from the Shamkhalate of Tarki, Dagestan, although his sister, Marina Tarkovskaya, who conducted detailed research on their genealogy, called it "a myth, even a prank of sorts," stressing that no document confirms this narrative.

Although he already spoke some Arabic and was a successful student in his first semesters, he did not finish his studies and dropped out to work as a prospector for the Academy of Science Institute for Non-Ferrous Metals and Gold.

The Khrushchev Thaw relaxed Soviet social restrictions a bit and permitted a limited influx of European and North American literature, films and music.

Andrei Rublev was not, except for a single screening in Moscow in 1966, immediately released after completion due to problems with Soviet authorities.

Soviet authorities placed the film in the "third category", a severely limited distribution, and only allowed it to be shown in third-class cinemas and workers' clubs.

The last film Tarkovsky completed in the Soviet Union was Stalker, inspired by the novel Roadside Picnic by the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.

In a question and answer session at the Edinburgh Filmhouse on 11 February 1981, Tarkovsky trenchantly rejected suggestions that the film was either impenetrably mysterious or a political allegory.

[21] In 1979, Tarkovsky began production of the film The First Day (Russian: Первый День Pervyj Dyen), based on a script by his friend and long-term collaborator Andrei Konchalovsky.

[23] Tarkovsky returned to Italy in 1982 to start shooting Nostalghia, but Mosfilm then withdrew from the project, so he sought and received financial backing from the Italian RAI.

Tarkovsky also shared a special prize called Grand Prix du cinéma de création with Robert Bresson.

On 28 August 1985, Tarkovsky was processed as a Soviet Defector at a refugee camp in Latina, Italy, registered with the serial number 13225/379, and officially welcomed to the West.

In January 1986, he began treatment in Paris and was joined there by his son, Andre Jr, who was finally allowed to leave the Soviet Union.

Other evidence includes several memoranda that surfaced after the 1991 coup and the claim by one of Tarkovsky's doctors that his cancer could not have developed from a natural cause.

He was amazed by how every character on the screen is exceptional and how everyday events such as a Samurai cutting bread with his sword are elevated to something special and put into the limelight.

[32] Tarkovsky perceived that the art of cinema has only been truly mastered by very few filmmakers, stating in a 1970 interview with Naum Abramov that "they can be counted on the fingers of one hand".

[34] Among his favorite directors were Buñuel, Mizoguchi, Bergman, Bresson, Kurosawa, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean Vigo, and Carl Theodor Dreyer.

However, in notable exceptions Tarkovsky praised the James Cameron blockbuster film The Terminator, saying that its "vision of the future and the relation between man and its destiny is pushing the frontier of cinema as an art".

Recurring motifs are dreams, memory, childhood, running water accompanied by fire, rain indoors, reflections, levitation, and characters re-appearing in the foreground of long panning movements of the camera.

After Mirror, he announced that he would focus his work on exploring the dramatic unities proposed by Aristotle: a concentrated action, happening in one place, within the span of a single day.

(Nykvist was not alone: several people involved in the production had previously collaborated with Bergman, notably lead actor Erland Josephson, who had also acted for Tarkovsky in Nostalghia.)

Under the influence of Glasnost and Perestroika, Tarkovsky was finally recognized in the Soviet Union in the Autumn of 1986, shortly before his death, by a retrospective of his films in Moscow.

[64] At the entrance to the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow, there is a monument that includes statues of Tarkovsky, Gennady Shpalikov and Vasily Shukshin.

"[67] The Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami remarked that: "Tarkovsky's works separate me completely from physical life, and are the most spiritual films I have seen".

[68] The Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan said that when he first discovered the films of Andrei Tarkovsky as a college student, unsure of what he wanted to do with his life, he was utterly baffled by the lauded Soviet master.

[68] The Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke voted for Mirror on his top 10 films in the 2002 Sight & Sound directors' poll[70][71] and later said that he has seen the picture at least 25 times.

[72][73] The American filmmaker Stan Brakhage said that: "I personally think that the three greatest tasks for film in the 20th century are (1) To make the epic, that is to tell the tales of the tribes of the world.