MIRROR aka ZERKALO

Year: 1975
UK: ICA (Projects)
Cast: Margarita Terekhova, Ignat Daniltsev, Larisa Tarkovskya, Alla Demidova, Anatoli Solonitsyn, Tamara Ogorodnikova, Filipp Yankovsky, Oleg Yankovsky, Nikolai Grinko, Yuri Nazarov, S Sventikov, Tamara Reshetnikova, Innokenti Smoktunovsky, Arseni Tarkovsky, L Correcer, E Del Bosque, Tatiana Del Bosque, Teresa Del Bosque, Diego Garcia, Alejandro Gutierrez, Teresa Rames, Yuri Sventisov
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Country: Russia
Language: Russian (English subtitles)
UK: 108 mins
UK Certificate: U
UK Release Date: 13 August 2004 (Limited Release - London)

Synopsis

A central work in director Andrei Tarkovsky's oeuvre, both figuratively and literally, the autobiographical MIRROR is a first-person journey back to a childhood revisited by Aleksei, a middle-aged Moscow intellectual. Sick and bedridden, it's through the eyes of his boyhood self (Ignat Daniltsev) that Aleksei can see his life most clearly; his memories of his mother provide a counterpoint to his present relationship with his estranged wife Natalya, while in the figure of the always-absent father he recognises his situation with his own son. Tarkovsky uses his father Arsenii's poetry to invoke the past, bringing it to life in a series of virtuosic shots and sequences.