CineStar 5    14.02., 20.15
CineStar 5    16.02., 15.00
Arsenal       15.02., 17.15

In his 1986 Journal, Andrei Tarkovsky gives the following commentary of the footage of his son Andriushas arrival in Paris, who was finally allowed to join him in France :''I have this monstrously stiff unnatural air, I hold back my emotions and repeat idiotic phrases... Larissa (his wife) isnt bad either, she monologues, proposes toasts, laughs and cries at the same time.."
Starting with that very Russian Day, to this beginning add themselves the evocations, the citations, the putting into perspective of what makes up the language of one of the greatest cinematic stylists of all times. Its from the point of view of the great tarkovskian themes and his unique writing that the films transport us, as far back as his first work at school in Moscow and the practically unknown Boris Godunov that he directed at Covent Garden in 1983. The structure imposed itself, the foundation being two other video shoots: that of a visit to the natural settings of Sacrifice in Gotland a few months earlier, when Tarkovsky did not yet know he was sick; and the one he wished, as a testimony to his work, when, shortly before his death, he directed the editing from his bed.
The title imposed itself in a similar manner. A wink to Solzhenitsyn, without a doubt, but most of all an echo of that Russia, mythical today, which on the border of agony once again exiled its greatest artist, and of which paradoxically, at the era of a devastating modernity, they are the only witnesses.