Andrey Arsenievich Tarkovsky was born on 4 April 1932 in Zavrazhie village on the Volga. He was the son of the poet Arseniy Tarkovsky and Maria Ivanovna Vishniakova. His parents divorced while he was still a child. His father's poetry features in Mirror, Stalker and Nostalgia, while his mother makes an appearance in Mirror.

Tarkovsky studied Arabic at the Moscow Institute of Oriental Languages between 1951 and 1954 and Geology in Siberia, before enrolling in the famous VGIK Moscow film school in 1959. In 1960 he made his prize-winning graduation short, The Steamroller and the Violin. In the early 1980s, Tarkovsky left Russia permanently. The few remaining years of his life were plagued by a constant struggle with the Soviet authorities to allow his family, particularly his young son,
Andrey, to join him. His filmmaking career started again in Italy where he followed the television documentary Tempo di viaggio (1983) with his most accomplished film since Mirror, Nostalgia, written in collaboration with the distinguished screenwriter Tonino Guerra.

By the time Tarkovsky started work on his final film, The Sacrifice, he was seriously ill with cancer. He died on 29 December 1986 and was buried at the Russian cemetery Sainte-Genevièvedes- Bois near Paris.

Films and other productions:
The Steamroller and the Violin (short, 1960)
Ivan's Childhood (1962)
Andrei Rublev (1966 rel. 1971)
Solaris (1972)
Mirror (1974)
Hamlet (1977) - The Lenkom Theatre (Moscow)
Stalker (1979)
Tempo di viaggio (1983) TV documentary
Nostalgia (1983)
Moussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov (1983) - Covent Garden (London)
The Sacrifice (1986)

Awards:
Venice Film Festival, Lion of St. Mark Award, best film, 1962, for Ivan's Childhood;
Cannes Film Festival, International Critics Award, 1969, for Andrei Rublev;
Cannes Film Festival, Grand Prize of the Jury Award, 1972, for Solaris;
Merited Artistic Worker of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist
Republic (RSFSR), 1974;
Cannes Film Festival, Grand Prize of the Jury Award, best screenplay, 1983, for Nostalgia;
Cannes Film Festival Award, Prize for First Work-Full Length Films, 1983;
Cannes Film Festival, Grand Prix, 1986, for The Sacrifice;
Cannes Film Festival, Grand Prize of the Jury Award, 1986, for The Sacrifice;
British Academy Film and Television Arts Award, best foreign language film, 1988, for The Sacrifice