Q 01/05

Which river runs past Tarkovsky's birthplace, Zavrazhye?

A) The Don

B) The Volga

C) The Neva

D) The Ob

Answer · why

B) The Volga

The Volga: his mother had gone to stay with relatives there, and Tarkovsky was born in the house of her stepfather, a doctor at the village hospital.

Q 02/05

How many feature films did Tarkovsky direct in his career?

A) 3

B) 7

C) 15

D) 30

Answer · why

B) 7

Only 7 features in a quarter-century: five in the Soviet Union, where film officials stalled project after project, and two in exile before cancer kil...

Q 03/05

What was Tarkovsky's first feature film, released in 1962?

A) The Steamroller and the Violin

B) Andrei Rublev

C) Ivan's Childhood

D) Solaris

Answer · why

C) Ivan's Childhood

Ivan's Childhood reached him as a wreck: another director's footage had been scrapped as unusable, and the unknown graduate was handed the war story t...

Q 04/05

Which festival prize did Tarkovsky's debut feature win in 1962?

A) The Silver Bear

B) The Golden Shell

C) The Golden Lion

D) The Palme d'Or

Answer · why

C) The Golden Lion

The Golden Lion at Venice made his name at 30, yet Communist critics attacked the film as bourgeois, and it was Jean-Paul Sartre who defended it in pr...

Q 05/05

Under which filmmaker did Tarkovsky study at the State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK)?

A) Grigori Kozintsev

B) Mikhail Kalatozov

C) Lev Kuleshov

D) Mikhail Romm

Answer · why

D) Mikhail Romm

Mikhail Romm taught Tarkovsky side by side with his opposite, the future writer-director Vasily Shukshin, who played the hunted ex-boxer in Tarkovsky'...