The Cinematheque

New Restoration / 35mm Print

“Extraordinary … Nostalghia is not so much a movie as a place to inhabit for two hours.”

J. Hoberman, Village Voice

Shot in Tuscany, and co-written with the prolific Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra (known for his frequent collaborations with Antonioni, Fellini, Rosi, and the Tavianis), Nostalghia was Tarkovsky’s first film made outside the USSR, and proved to be the director’s penultimate work. While in Italy researching the life of an 18th-century Russian composer who committed suicide there, a Soviet musicologist has a sexually charged but unconsummated relationship with his beautiful translator, and meets a mysterious madman convinced the world is about to end. Appearing in the latter role is Bergman regular Erland Josephson, later the star of The Sacrifice, Tarkovsky’s final film. Nostalghia is suffused with an almost overwhelming sense of longing and homesickness, and is composed of some of Tarkovsky’s most astonishing imagery. The film shared a special Grand Prize for Creative Cinema with Bresson’s L’argent at Cannes in 1983.

In Russian and Italian with English subtitles

The new restoration of Nostalghia also screens as part of our ​“Deep Focus: Andrei Tarkovsky” interactive lecture on December 9 at 12:30 pm.

“Transcendental … Tarkovsky was able to depict soul-searching better than perhaps any other director … His films remain so important today because of their ineffable spirituality, which has all but vanished in today’s technological world.”

Kalvin Henely, Slant

“No one makes movies like this anymore.”

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out