The Cinematheque

Essential Cinema

“Tarkovsky is for me the greatest, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.”

Ingmar Bergman

Tarkovsky’s immersive, deeply mysterious masterpiece — screening here in its vivid 2017 restoration — has been likened to ​“The Wizard of Oz adapted by a disciple of Dostoevsky and Kafka” (Philip French, The Guardian). In a post-apocalyptic police state, two men, a writer and a scientist, engage the special skills of a Stalker to guide them through the forbidden Zone, a damp, fecund, overgrown wasteland where the rules of nature no longer apply. At the Zone’s centre is the Room, a place where the deepest desires of one’s heart are said to come true. The extraordinary journey will test the limits of the way each of the three protagonists makes sense of the world. Tarkovsky’s film, haunting and unforgettable, is distinguished by a remarkable sense of tactility, composed of stunning sepia and colour images, and offers layer upon layer of meaning.