Tarkovsky Season // Stalker (1979)

Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky | Russia | 162 min | PG | subtitles

The second film in a season celebrating the great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, brought to you by students of Falmouth University's School of Film and Television.

Deep within the Zone, a bleak and devastated forbidden landscape, lies a mysterious room with the power to grant the deepest wishes of those strong enough to make the hazardous journey there. Desperate to reach it, a scientist and a writer approach the Stalker, one of the few able to navigate the Zone’s menacing terrain, and begin a dangerous trek into the unknown.

Adapted from Arkady & Boris Sturgatsky’s novel ‘Roadside Picnic’, Andrei Tarkovsky’s second foray into science fiction after Solaris is a surreal and disturbing vision of the future. Hauntingly exploring man’s dreams and desires as well as the consequences of realising them, Stalker has been described as one of the greatest sci-fi films of all time.