Tarkovsky’s first feature won him immediate international acclaim as he received the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and the respect of individuals such as Bergman and Sartre. Twelve-year-old Ivan (Kolya Burlyaev) has attached himself to a Russian regiment fighting the Nazis, where his size makes him invaluable for increasingly dangerous reconnaissance missions. The boy is determined to avenge the death of his parents at the hands of German soldiers. Ivan’s Childhood blurs the boundaries between dream and reality as a means of examining the tension between past and present. What Tarkovsky called his “qualifying examination”, Bergman believed “like a miracle.”

This film is screening as part of our Andrei Tarkovsky season, May 14th – 28th.