- He said that children understood his films better than adults.
- He was an admirer of the films of Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman. Both older filmmakers later praised Tarkovsky's own films.
- Ingmar Bergman hailed him as "the most important director of all time".
- Tarkovsky, his wife and his long time collaborator Anatoli Solonitsyn all died from the very same type of lung cancer.
- Wrote the Book 'Sculpting in Time'. In it he explains and discusses his views on cinema, cinema as an art, his own films and the use of poetry in his films.
- In Tarkovsky's last diary entry (15 December 1986), he wrote: 'But now I have no strength left - that is the problem'.
- In almost every movie he made, there is a shot or a sound of water dripping.
- His ten favorite films are; Journal d'un curé de campagne (1951), Mouchette (1967), Nattvardsgästerna (1962), Smultronstället (1957), Persona (1966), Nazarín (1959), City Lights (1931), Ugetsu Monogatari (1953), Shichinin no Samurai (1954) and Suna no Onna (1964).
- The inscription on his gravestone reads; 'To the man who saw the Angel'.
- There is a controversy about whether he was assassinated by the KGB.
- Although it was his most widely seen film outside of the Soviet Union, he reportedly regarded Solaris (1972) as his least favorite of the films he directed.
- Andrei Tarkovsky made 32 versions of Mirror (1975) before he approved the final (33rd) cut.
- At the Cannes film festival, he won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury three times (more than any other director) with Offret (1986), Nostalghia (1983) and Stalker (1979).
- Studied Arabic at the Oriental Institute in Moscow but he dropped out.
- Although strongly opposed to commercial cinema, in a famous exception Tarkovsky praised the blockbuster film The Terminator (1984), saying its "vision of the future and the relation between man and its destiny is pushing the frontier of cinema as an art".
- His favorite filmmakers were Akira Kurosawa, Luis Buñuel, Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, Kenji Mizoguchi, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean Vigo, and Carl Theodor Dreyer.
- According to Ingmar Bergman, Tarkovsky "is the greatest, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream".
- A minor planet, 3345 Tarkovskij, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina in 1982, has been named after him.
- Tarkovsky's father Arseniy Tarkovskiy was a noted Russian poet, whose poetry Tarkovsky used in Stalker (1979) recited by the main character, and Mirror (1975) recited by Arseniy himself.
- In their obituaries, the film committee of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Union of Soviet Film Makers expressed their sorrow that Tarkovsky had to spend the last years of his life in exile.
- Was also a film theorist, theatre and opera director.
- Friend of Sergei Parajanov, who was best friends with Mikhail Vartanov. All were graduates of the legendary Russian film school VGIK and met many times; the latter's Russian Academy Award-winning Parajanov: The Last Spring (1992) features a poetic chapter on the the friendship of Parajanov and Tarkovsky.
- Under the influence of Glasnost and Perestroika, Tarkovsky was finally recognized in the Soviet Union in the Autumn of 1986, shortly before his death, by a retrospective of his films in Moscow.
- Member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 1982.
- Buried in Orthodox Graveyard for Russian Emigrés in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, France.
- In his school years, he was a troublemaker and a poor student.
- Sergei Parajanov dedicated "Ashik Kerib" to Tarkovskiy.
- One of his teachers at VGIK was Mikhail Romm.
- "Dear Andrei Retrospective" held at the 2007 Navarra International Documentary Film Festival with Marina Tarkovsky and Alexander Gordon in attendance.
- Worked as a prospector for the Academy of Science Institute for Non-Ferrous Metals and Gold in the USSR. He also participated in a year-long research expedition to the river Kureikye near Turukhansk in the Krasnoyarsk Province. During this time in the taiga, Tarkovsky decided to study film.
- Was posthumously awarded the Lenin Prize in 1990, one of the highest state honors in the Soviet Union.
- In Tarkovsky's last days, photographs of his three-month-old son Sasha were brought to the hospital, but he never saw the baby in person, as Sasha's mother Inger Pehrsson didn't visit him.
- Profiled in "Films and Dreams: Tarkovsky, Bergman, Sokurov, Kubrick and Wong Kar-Wei" by Thurston Botz-Borsnstein. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008.
- Mikhail Romm, a Soviet film director, was his teacher and mentor.
- Tarkovskiy was born in Zavrazhye village, Yuryevets area, Ivanovo Region, Russian SFSR, USSR. That place goes now by the address of Zavrazhye, Kadyy area, Kostroma Region, Russian Federation.
- At the State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), he was in the same class as Irma Raush whom he married in April 1957.
- Husband of actress, director, and children's author Irma Tarkovskaya [Irma Raush] (1st wife). Father of Arseniy Tarkovsky Jr [Senka] (born 30 Sep 1962) (with wife Irina) (son).
- Father of Aleksandr Tarkovsky [Sasha] (born Sep 1986) (son). The mother is Norwegian costume designer Inger Pehrsson.
- Brother of writer and linguist Marina Tarkovskaya (sister). Brother-in-law of film school classmate director and author Aleksandr Gordon (husband of sister Marina). Uncle of writer, poet, biologist, trapper, and cinematographer Mikhail Tarkovsky (nephew), and child actress Ekaterina Tarkovskaya [Katya] (niece); the children of Marina and Gordon.
- Son of poet and translator Arseniy Tarkovskiy (father) and Maria Ivanova Vishnyakova (born 1907) (mother).
- 2nd Husband of Larisa Tarkovskaya [Larisa Kizilova (née Egorkina)] (2nd wife). Father of Andrey A. Tarkovskiy [Andriosha; Andrei Tarkovsky Jr] (with wife Larisa) (son). Stepfather of Olga Kizilova (daughter of wife Larisa from her previous marriage) (stepdaughter).
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content