Andrei Tarkovsky: influences, peers and legacy

Every connection with its receipt

Tarkovsky built his cinema from a small, fiercely held canon — Bresson, Mizoguchi, Bergman, Buñuel — and from the poetry of his father Arseny, whose verses he read aloud over his own images. This mix traces the Thaw-era Mosfilm world that formed him, the teachers and cameramen who enabled him, and the slow-cinema successors who still invoke his name.

The Kynda mix for Andrei Tarkovsky

• Key Influence · Diary of a Country Priest by Robert Bresson (1951). Bresson sat atop Tarkovsky's famous list of favourite films, and in Sculpting in Time Tarkovsky holds him up as cinema's model of ascetic purity — an artist who removes rather than adds. The priest's diary, with its off-screen voice, withheld emotion and sacramental ordinariness, prefigures the whispered inner monologues of Mirror and the spiritual ordeal of Stalker, where faith is tested through exhaustion rather than spectacle.
• Influencia Obscura · Nine Days in One Year by Mikhail Romm (1962). Romm taught Tarkovsky's directing workshop at VGIK and protected his students through Mosfilm's bureaucracy; Tarkovsky's diploma film The Steamroller and the Violin came out of that class. Romm's drama of nuclear physicists arguing about conscience and radiation sickness is the Thaw's most intellectually restless film, and its cool, debating scientists are an unmistakable ancestor of the Solaris station crew.
• Local Roots · Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Sergei Parajanov (1965). Parajanov and Tarkovsky formed Soviet cinema's great mutual admiration society; Parajanov said Tarkovsky's work taught him to abandon conventional narrative, and Tarkovsky campaigned publicly for Parajanov's release during his imprisonment. Shot in the Carpathians with whirling handheld camera, saturated colour and folk ritual, it is the Thaw's other great break from socialist realism.
• Beyond the Medium · Life, Life: Selected Poems by Arseny Tarkovsky (1965). His father's poems are not an influence on Tarkovsky's films so much as material inside them: Arseny reads his own verse on the soundtracks of Mirror, Stalker and Nostalghia. The abandonment of the family, the wartime separations and the poet's metaphysics of time and memory supply Mirror's entire emotional architecture, making a book of Russian lyric poetry the film's co-author.
• Peer · The Red and the White by Miklós Jancsó (1967). Jancsó was the Eastern Bloc's other master of the extended take, choreographing civil-war atrocity across the Hungarian plain in minutes-long travelling shots with no close-ups. Working in the same post-1956 thaw conditions and the same festival circuit as Tarkovsky, he offers the alternative solution to duration: history as impersonal ritual, where Tarkovsky made it interior and sacramental.
• From the Canon · Mirror by Andrei Tarkovsky (1975). The hinge of the career: an autobiography assembled from newsreel, dream, his mother cast as herself in the present, and his father's poems read aloud. Soviet officials found it incomprehensible and restricted its release, yet Tarkovsky reported being moved by letters from ordinary viewers who recognised their own memories. Every later film's handling of time as a substance begins here.
• Key Collaborator · Amarcord by Federico Fellini (1973). Guerra co-wrote Nostalghia with Tarkovsky and hosted him during the Italian travels documented in Voyage in Time; the screenwriter's Romagna sensibility shaped the exile's homesickness at the film's core. Amarcord shows Guerra's own instrument — memory as a village of comic, aching fragments — the same method Tarkovsky pushed toward mist, ruins and a candle carried across an empty pool.
• Legacy · Antichrist by Lars von Trier (2009). Von Trier dedicated Antichrist to Tarkovsky outright and has described Mirror as a formative revelation, calling himself close to a devotee. The slow-motion prologue, the forest as a spiritual battlefield and the doomed child echo Mirror and The Sacrifice, even as the film's violence pushes the inheritance somewhere Tarkovsky would have refused to follow.

What influenced Andrei Tarkovsky

• Michelangelo Antonioni. The article explicitly describes Antonioni as an influence on Tarkovsky. “At times Antonioni comes to mind, his black and white period, L'Avventura, my favorite of his films.” (Panorama)
• Diary Of A Country Priest by Robert Bresson. Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson) — titan for Andrei Tarkovsky “In 1972, Tarkovsky told film historian Leonid Kozlov his ten favorite films. The list is as follows: Diary of a Country Priest and Mouchette by Robert Bresson” (Wikipedia)
• Ugetsu by Kenji Mizoguchi (1953). Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi) — titan for Andrei Tarkovsky “City Lights by Charlie Chaplin ; Ugetsu by Kenji Mizoguchi ; Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa” (Wikipedia)
• Winter Light by Ingmar Bergman. Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman) — titan for Andrei Tarkovsky “Winter Light , Wild Strawberries , and Persona by Ingmar Bergman ; Nazarín by Luis Buñuel” (Wikipedia)
• Earth by Alexander Dovzhenko (1930). Earth (Alexander Dovzhenko) — ghost for Andrei Tarkovsky “Tarkovsky considered Earth to be his cinematic "university" and would watch the film whenever beginning a new work.” (Wikipedia)
• Nazarín by Luis Buñuel (1959). Nazarín (Luis Buñuel) — ghost for Andrei Tarkovsky “Winter Light , Wild Strawberries , and Persona by Ingmar Bergman ; Nazarín by Luis Buñuel” (Wikipedia)
• Mikhail Romm. Tarkovsky studied under Romm. (also via Nine Days in One Year) “Tarkovsky studied film at the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography under filmmaker Mikhail Romm” (Wikipedia)
• Ashes and Diamonds by Andrzej Wajda. The article explicitly identifies Wajda’s film as an influence on Tarkovsky. “of directors such as Kurosawa , Buñuel , Bergman , Bresson , Wajda (whose film Ashes and Diamonds influenced Tarkovsky) and Mizoguchi” (Wikipedia)
• Mouchette by Robert Bresson. Tarkovsky named the film among his favorites. “In 1972, Tarkovsky told film historian Leonid Kozlov his ten favorite films. The list is as follows: Diary of a Country Priest and Mouchette by Robert Bresson” (Wikipedia)
• Wild Strawberries by Ingmar Bergman (1957). Wild Strawberries appears in Tarkovsky’s list of favorite films. “Winter Light , Wild Strawberries , and Persona by Ingmar Bergman ; Nazarín by Luis Buñuel” (Wikipedia)
• Persona by Ingmar Bergman (1966). Persona appears in Tarkovsky’s list of favorite films. “Winter Light , Wild Strawberries , and Persona by Ingmar Bergman ; Nazarín by Luis Buñuel” (Wikipedia)
• City Lights by Charlie Chaplin (1931). City Lights appears in Tarkovsky’s list of favorite films. “City Lights by Charlie Chaplin ; Ugetsu by Kenji Mizoguchi ; Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa” (Wikipedia)
• Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa. Seven Samurai appears in Tarkovsky’s list of favorite films. “City Lights by Charlie Chaplin ; Ugetsu by Kenji Mizoguchi ; Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa” (Wikipedia)
• Woman in the Dunes by Hiroshi Teshigahara. Woman in the Dunes appears in Tarkovsky’s list of favorite films. “Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa , and Woman in the Dunes by Hiroshi Teshigahara . He also liked Pier Paolo Pasolini 's film” (Wikipedia)
• The Gospel According to St. Matthew by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1964). The article reports Tarkovsky’s liking for Pasolini’s film. “He also liked Pier Paolo Pasolini 's film The Gospel According to St. Matthew .” (Wikipedia)
• Fyodor Dostoevsky. The article explicitly identifies Dostoevsky’s writings as an influence. “He was deeply influenced by the existentialist writings of Dostoevsky , and planned to make a film about the writer that was never completed.” (Wikipedia)
• Johann Sebastian Bach. The article connects Tarkovsky’s artistic ideal to Bach. (also via St Matthew Passion) “Tarkovsky saw fragments of this artistic ideal in some Western art (notably J.S. Bach ), in Eastern Orthodox Christian iconography” (Wikipedia)
• Andrei Rublev by Andrei Rublev. Criterion reproduces Tarkovsky’s question about choosing the icon painter as the subject of his film. “Why did I choose Andrei Rublev for this film?” (The Criterion Collection)
• Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. The article identifies Roadside Picnic as the novel that inspired Stalker. (via Stalker) “The last film Tarkovsky completed in the Soviet Union was Stalker , inspired by the novel Roadside Picnic by the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky .” (Wikipedia)
• Nine Days in One Year by Mikhail Romm (1962). Nine Days in One Year (Mikhail Romm) — ghost for Andrei Tarkovsky “Tarkovsky studied film at the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography under filmmaker Mikhail Romm and subsequently directed his first five features in the Soviet Union: Ivan's Childhood (1962), Andrei Rublev (1966), Solaris (1972), …” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Life, Life: Selected Poems by Arseny Tarkovsky (1965). Life, Life: Selected Poems (Arseny Tarkovsky) — culture for Andrei Tarkovsky “== Personal life == Father: Arseny Tarkovsky (June 25, 1907 – May 27, 1989), poet.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• St Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach. St Matthew Passion (Johann Sebastian Bach) — culture for Andrei Tarkovsky
• Adoration of the Magi by Leonardo da Vinci (1481). Adoration of the Magi (Leonardo da Vinci) — culture for Andrei Tarkovsky

Peers and kindred spirits

• Claudio Abbado by Claudio Abbado. Tarkovsky staged Boris Godunov with Abbado serving as musical director. “After Cannes he went to London to stage and choreograph the opera Boris Godunov at the Royal Opera House under the musical direction of Claudio Abbado .” (Wikipedia)
• Ingmar Bergman (1918). Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky) — peer for Ingmar Bergman (via Mirror, The Sacrifice, Winter Light) “Tarkovsky's vision of his film was greatly influenced by Bergman's style.” (Wikipedia)
• Tonino Guerra by Tonino Guerra. Tarkovsky and Guerra made the documentary Voyage in Time together. “During the summer of 1979, Tarkovsky traveled to Italy, where he shot the documentary Voyage in Time together with his long-time friend Tonino Guerra .” (Wikipedia)
• Andrei Konchalovsky by Andrei Konchalovsky. Tarkovsky and Konchalovsky co-wrote Antarctica – Distant Country. “In 1959, they wrote the script Antarctica – Distant Country , which was later published in the Moskovskij Komsomolets .” (Wikipedia)
• Amarcord by Federico Fellini (1973). Amarcord (Federico Fellini) — collaborator for Andrei Tarkovsky “He worked with such filmmakers as Michelangelo Antonioni, in L'Avventura, La Notte, L'Eclisse, Red Desert, Blowup, Zabriskie Point and Identification of a Woman; Federico Fellini, in Amarcord; Theo Angelopoulos, in Landscape in the Mist,…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Walking the Streets of Moscow by Georgiy Daneliya (1964). Walking the Streets of Moscow (Georgiy Daneliya) — collaborator for Andrei Tarkovsky “He was known for his collaborations with Andrei Tarkovsky on The Steamroller and the Violin, Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublev and Solaris, and with Georgiy Daneliya on Walking the Streets of Moscow, Don't Grieve, Hopelessly Lost and Passp…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Sergei Parajanov (1965). Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Parajanov) — geography for Andrei Tarkovsky “The list has also no films or directors from Tarkovsky's native Soviet Union, although he rated Soviet directors such as Boris Barnet, Sergei Parajanov, and Alexander Dovzhenko highly.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Ascent by Larisa Shepitko (1977). The Ascent (Larisa Shepitko) — geography for Andrei Tarkovsky “Andrei Tarkovsky, a fellow filmmaker and friend of Shepitko, wrote in his journal about the event after attending her funeral, "...” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Cries and Whispers by Ingmar Bergman (1972). Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman) — collaborator for Andrei Tarkovsky “It was finally shot in 1985 in Sweden, with many of the crew being alumni from Ingmar Bergman's films, including cinematographer Sven Nykvist.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Vadim Yusov. Yusov was Tarkovsky’s close cinematographic collaborator. “Tarkovsky worked in close collaboration with cinematographer Vadim Yusov from 1958 to 1972, and much of the visual style of Tarkovsky's films can be attributed to this collaboration.” (Wikipedia)
• Aleksandr Gordon. Gordon collaborated with Tarkovsky on two student films. “Classmate Aleksandr Gordon , who married Tarkovsky's sister, in particular directed, wrote, edited, and acted in the two films with Tarkovsky.” (Wikipedia)
• 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick (1968). Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky) — peer for 2001: A Space Odyssey (via Solaris) “The Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky found the film to be an inadequate addition to the science fiction genre of filmmaking.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Sven Nykvist. Nykvist was the cinematographer on The Sacrifice. (via The Sacrifice) “In his last film, The Sacrifice , Tarkovsky worked with cinematographer Sven Nykvist , who had worked on many films with director Ingmar Bergman .” (Wikipedia)
• The Cranes Are Flying by Mikhail Kalatozov (1957). The Cranes Are Flying (Mikhail Kalatozov) — geography for Andrei Tarkovsky (themoviedb.org)
• The Red and the White by Miklós Jancsó (1967). The Red and the White (Miklós Jancsó) — peer for Andrei Tarkovsky (themoviedb.org)
• My Friend Ivan Lapshin by Aleksei German (1984). My Friend Ivan Lapshin (Aleksei German) — peer for Andrei Tarkovsky (themoviedb.org)
• Illumination by Krzysztof Zanussi (1973). Illumination (Krzysztof Zanussi) — peer for Andrei Tarkovsky

Who Andrei Tarkovsky influenced

• Sergei Parajanov. Parajanov credited Ivan’s Childhood with inspiring him to become a filmmaker. (via Ivan's Childhood, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, The Color of Pomegranates) “watching Tarkovsky's film, Ivan's Childhood was his main inspiration to become a filmmaker by saying: "I did not know how to do anything and I would not have done anything if there had not been Ivan's Childhood "” (Wikipedia)
• Antichrist by Lars von Trier (2009). Antichrist (Lars von Trier) — legacy for Andrei Tarkovsky “Danish film director Lars von Trier is a fervent admirer of Tarkovsky. He dedicated his 2009 film Antichrist to him” (Wikipedia)
• The Revenant by Alejandro G. Iñárritu. The article identifies Tarkovsky references and tributes in The Revenant. “I was looking more toward things like Dersu Uzala by Kurosawa, Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev —which is maybe my favorite film ever—Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo , even Apocalypse Now .” (Film Comment)
• Mamoru Oshii by Mamoru Oshii. The article states that Tarkovsky influenced Oshii. “The Japanese anime filmmaker Mamoru Oshii , known for his works such as Ghost in the Shell , was influenced by Tarkovsky.” (Wikipedia)
• Andrzej Żuławski by Andrzej Żuławski. Żuławski explicitly described Tarkovsky as an influence on him. “The Polish filmmaker Andrzej Żuławski remarked that: "If anybody influenced anybody, it's me being influenced by Tarkovsky, not the reverse"” (Wikipedia)
• Once Upon a Time in Anatolia by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (2011). Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan) — legacy for Andrei Tarkovsky “The Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan said that when he first discovered the films of Andrei Tarkovsky as a college student, unsure of what he wanted to do with his life, he was utterly baffled by the lauded Soviet master.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders (1987). Wenders dedicated Wings of Desire in part to Tarkovsky. “The German filmmaker Wim Wenders dedicated his film Wings of Desire to Tarkovsky (along with François Truffaut and Yasujirō Ozu ).” (Wikipedia)
• Alex Proyas. The article reports Proyas’s strong admiration of Tarkovsky’s work. “The Greek-Australian filmmaker Alex Proyas was "extremely influenced" by Tarkovsky's work and cited Stalker as one of his favorite films.” (Wikipedia)
• The Color of Pomegranates by Sergei Parajanov (1969). Ivan's Childhood (Andrei Tarkovsky) — titan for The Color of Pomegranates (via Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublev) (wikidata.org)
• First Reformed. Critic notes explicit references to Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice in First Reformed. (via The Sacrifice) “Shrader even throws in references to Ingmar Bergman's "Winter Light" and Andrei Tarkovsky's "The Sacrifice" for good measure.” (Fresh Air (NPR/WHYY))
• Krzysztof Kieślowski. Kieślowski regarded Ivan’s Childhood as an influence. (via Ivan's Childhood) “regarded Tarkovsky's film Ivan's Childhood as an influence on his own work.” (Wikipedia)
• Michael Haneke. Haneke selected Mirror for his top-ten films list. (via Mirror) “The Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke voted for Mirror on his top 10 films in the 2002 Sight & Sound directors' poll” (Wikipedia)
• Sans Soleil by Chris Marker (1983). Marker used a concept from Stalker in Sans Soleil. (via Stalker) “used Tarkovsky's concept of "The Zone" (from the film, Stalker ) for his 1983 film essay , Sans Soleil .” (Wikipedia)
• Theo Angelopoulos. Angelopoulos identified Stalker as an influence. (via Stalker) “The Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos regarded Tarkovsky's film Stalker as one of the films that influenced him.” (Wikipedia)
• Mother and Son by Alexander Sokurov (1997). Mother and Son (Alexander Sokurov) — legacy for Andrei Tarkovsky “Most notable is the 1988 documentary Moscow Elegy, by Russian film director Alexander Sokurov.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Björk (1965). Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky) — culture for Björk (via Stalker) (wikidata.org)
• Brian Eno. Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky) — culture for Brian Eno (via Stalker) (themoviedb.org)