File:Stalker_poster.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
OverviewAI-generated
Stalker is a 1979 Soviet science fiction, art, and drama film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. The screenwriters were Andrei Tarkovsky, Arkady Strugatsky, and Boris Strugatsky, with the story based on Roadside Picnic. The cast includes Anatoly Solonitsyn, Alisa Freindlich, Alexander Kaidanovsky, and Nikolai Grinko. Eduard Artemyev composed the music, while Mosfilm served as the production company. The film was shot in black-and-white in Tallinn and distributed by the State Committee for Cinematography and Netflix.
The original Russian-language film has a runtime of 162 or 163 minutes and uses the Academy aspect ratio. It was released on May 25, 1979, with a budget of 120000. Audience ratings include an 8.1 average from 2494 votes on TMDb and an 8.0 rating from 156204 votes on IMDb.
Synthesized by Vinony from 40 facts across 4 sources: Wikidata, TMDb, IMDb, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Film · TMDB
8.1Near a gray and unnamed city is the Zone, a place guarded by barbed wire and soldiers, and where the normal laws of physics are victim to frequent anomalies. A stalker guides two men into the Zone, specifically to an area in which deep-seated desires are granted.
Cast
- Alisa Freyndlikh as Stalker's Wife
- Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy as Stalker
- Anatoliy Solonitsyn as Writer
- Mykola Hrynko as Professor
- Natalya Abramova as Marta
- Faime Jurno as Writer's Companion
Themes
- based on novel or book
- guard
- wish
- stalker
- alien
- strugatsky
- writer
- soldier
- existentialism
- zone
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Encyclopedic overview
Stalker (Russian: Сталкер, IPA: [ˈstaɫkʲɪr]) is a 1979 Soviet science fantasy film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky with a screenplay written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, loosely based on their 1972 novel Roadside Picnic. The film tells the story of an expedition led by a figure known as the "Stalker" (Alexander Kaidanovsky), who guides his two clients—a melancholic writer (Anatoly Solonitsyn) and a professor (Nikolai Grinko)—through a hazardous wasteland to a mysterious restricted site known simply as the "Zone", where supposedly exists a room which grants a person's innermost desires. The film combines elements of science fiction and fantasy with dramatic, philosophical, and psychological themes.
The film was shot over a year on film stock that was later discovered to be unusable and had to be almost entirely reshot with a new cinematographer, Alexander Knyazhinsky. Stalker was released by Goskino in May 1979. Upon release, the film garnered praise in the Soviet and Warsaw Pact press, but only mixed reviews in the West. In later years it was recognised as one of the greatest films of all time. In the decennial critics' and directors' polls published by the British Film Institute's magazine Sight and Sound in 2022, Stalker placed 43rd and 14th, respectively. The film sold over 4 million tickets, mostly in the Soviet Union, against a budget of 1 million roubles.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Stalker” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.