Recorded in 2002, this commentary features film scholars Vida Johnson and Graham Petrie, coauthors of “The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue.”

Natalya Bondarchuk, the daughter of Soviet director Sergei Bondarchuk (WAR AND PEACE), acted in many films after SOLARIS, but in this 2011 piece, she says Hari was her favorite role. Just eighteen at the time of production, she was director Andrei Tarkovsky’s favorite of the film’s actors. He wro...

Director Andrei Tarkovsky relied on cinematographer Vadim Yusov for the stunning images of THE STEAMROLLER AND THE VIOLIN, IVAN’S CHILDHOOD, ANDREI RUBLEV, and finally, SOLARIS. In this 2011 interview, Yusov reflects on their relationship, Tarkovsky’s perfectionism, and their meeting in Italy bef...

Although SOLARIS was occasionally marketed as the Soviet 2001, director Andrei Tarkovsky actually thought of his film as 2001’s polar opposite—it emphasized humanity and morality over special effects and science fiction. For the creation of SOLARIS’s distinctive look, Tarkovsky turned to art dire...

One of SOLARIS’s most distinctive features is its innovative combination of musical styles. Eduard Artemyev’s score contrasts Earth’s culture and family relations with the impersonal, abstract Solaris Ocean. In this 2011 piece, Artemyev discusses his working relationship with director Andrei Tark...

One person who decidedly did not like Andrei Tarkovsky’s film SOLARIS was Stanislaw Lem, the author of the source novel. The film explores completely different themes from Lem’s philosophically oriented science fiction. This excerpt from a Polish television documentary addresses Lem’s attempts to...

Director Andrei Tarkovsky cut SOLARIS significantly before the film went to Cannes in 1972. Long thought to be lost, the original version was, in fact, in the Russian film archive Gosfilmofond. Presented here is a sequence from the original version that differs from Tarkovsky’s final cut.