Season curator Dr Adam Laity says:

“Stalker is Tarkovsky’s most complete vision of what we might consider his philosophical and/or spiritual study on the relationship between the human and the more-than-human. Characters in his films often find solace or a trigger for memory in nature and the elemental, and it’s the otherness of the film’s Zone (a mysterious realm where one’s wishes come true) that provokes a deep soul-searching in each of its human travellers.”

Considered by many to be Andrei Tarkovsky’s magnus opus, this genre-defying portrait of a decayed post-industrial society muses on human desires and the ambition we employ in order to achieve them.

In a future world that has been seemingly ravaged by war and poverty there exists a myth of hope amongst the people – a forbidden place known only as the Zone, at the heart of which lies a mysterious room with the power to grant the deepest wishes of those strong enough to make the hazardous journey there.

Desperate to reach it, a scientist and a writer approach the Stalker, one of the few able to navigate the Zone’s menacing terrain, and begin a dangerous trek into the unknown…

An epic exploration of freedom and faith, Tarkovsky’s second foray into science fiction (after Solaris) is a poetic, hypnotic film that explores the purpose of art, as well as human desires and what we really need to be a human. Rightly recognised as a masterpiece, this is a rare chance to see it on the big screen.

Part of More-Than-Human: Cinematic Landscapes of Otherness in Nature.

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