Yuriy Nazarov

A desperate Russian tourist goes to the Monastery of Temptation in Israel to find an elder healer called Amun to hopefully save his dying son s life. His search leads him to the Judaean desert. Thirst and scalding sun bring the traveler to complete exhaustion but his son s life is at stake and there s no way back. Even though the protagonist does not believe in miracles he completes his journey and receives salvation.

Anxious for a new and improved life, young Vera escapes her abusive home to marry her boyfriend Sergei, who turns out to be penniless.

Tracing the life of a renowned icon painter, the second feature by Andrei Tarkovsky vividly conjures the murky world of medieval 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. Appearing here in the director’s preferred 183-minute cut as well as the version that was originally suppressed by Soviet authorities, the masterwork ANDREI RUBLEV is one of Tarkovsky’s most revered films, an arresting meditation on art, faith, and endurance.