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60 free Andrei Tarkovsky trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Andrei Tarkovsky trivia quiz covers the Soviet master who made only seven features and changed cinema with every one of them. The easy questions are the ones any film lover can manage: the Zone and the Room, the ocean planet, the icon painter, the country he was born in and the book he called Sculpting in Time. From there the set moves through the films in order: the Golden Lion for Ivan's Childhood, the censored Andrei Rublev and its bell-casting finale, Solaris and its levitation scene, the autobiographical Mirror and its third-category release, Stalker's ruined negatives and toxic Estonian locations, Nostalghia's candle in the drained pool and The Sacrifice's house that burned twice. The harder end is for the devotees: his teacher Mikhail Romm, the Hemingway short he made as a student, the geological expedition in the taiga that made him choose film, cinematographers Vadim Yusov and Sven Nykvist, the actors he used again and again, the Strugatsky novel behind Stalker, the Hamlet he staged at the Lenkom, the Boris Godunov at Covent Garden, his defection in Italy, the diaries called Martyrology, the gravestone inscription and the minor planet named after him. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for Tarkovsky and each of his films before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Classic Cinema, Film Directors and Science Fiction Movies quizzes next.
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Q 01In which year was Andrei Tarkovsky born?
1932
He was born in the village of Zavrazhye and grew up in Yuryevets and Moscow.
Q 02How many feature films did Tarkovsky direct in his career?
7
Five were made in the Soviet Union and two abroad.
Q 03What was Tarkovsky's first feature film, released in 1962?
Ivan's Childhood
He inherited the project from another director who had to abandon it.
Q 04Which prize did Tarkovsky's debut feature win at the 1962 Venice Film Festival?
The Golden Lion
It also won the Golden Gate Award in San Francisco the same year.
Q 05Under which filmmaker did Tarkovsky study at the State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK)?
Mikhail Romm
Romm taught many students who became major directors.
Q 06Tarkovsky's first student short, The Killers (1956), was adapted from a story by which writer?
Ernest Hemingway
Classmate Aleksandr Gordon, who married Tarkovsky's sister, co-directed it.
Q 07What was Tarkovsky's diploma film, sold to Mosfilm and co-written with Andrei Konchalovsky?
The Steamroller and the Violin
It won First Prize at the New York Student Film Festival in 1961.
Q 08Before film school, Tarkovsky worked as a prospector on a year-long expedition in which region?
The Siberian taiga near Turukhansk
It was there, on the river Kureyka, that he decided to study film.
Q 09What language did Tarkovsky briefly study at the Oriental Institute in Moscow before dropping out?
Arabic
He was a troublemaker and poor student in his school years.
Q 10Tarkovsky's father Arseny was celebrated in which art form?
Poetry
His poems are recited in voiceover in his son's most autobiographical film.
Q 11Andrei Rublev, Tarkovsky's 1966 epic, portrays the life of what kind of artist?
An icon painter
It was widely released in the Soviet Union only in a cut version in 1971.
Q 12What was the original 205-minute version of the 1966 medieval epic titled?
The Passion According to Andrei
It was censored during the first decade of the Brezhnev era.
Q 13The final episode of Andrei Rublev follows the boy Boriska as he undertakes what task?
Casting a giant bell
He falsely claims his dead father taught him the secret of the craft.
Q 21Which visual motif appears in several Tarkovsky films, most notably Solaris?
Characters levitating
He valued such scenes for their photogenic power and magical inexplicability.
Q 22Which of Tarkovsky's films is highly autobiographical and built around his father's poems?
Mirror
Its working titles included Confession and A White, White Day.
Q 23How did Soviet authorities restrict the 1975 autobiographical film on release?
They gave it 'third category' distribution
It was shown only in third-class cinemas and workers' clubs.
Q 14Andrei Rublev opens with a prologue in which a man named Yefim takes flight by what means?
A hot air balloon
An ignorant mob arriving from the river tries to stop the launch.
Q 15What appears in the colour epilogue that closes the otherwise black-and-white Andrei Rublev?
The painter's real icons
In 1966 Tarkovsky dismissed colour film as a commercial gimmick.
Q 16Solaris (1972) was adapted from a novel by which writer?
Stanisław Lem
Tarkovsky worked on the screenplay with Friedrich Gorenstein from 1968.
Q 17Which 1968 Western film did Tarkovsky call 'phoney' and 'lifeless' while making Solaris?
2001: A Space Odyssey
He wanted to bring emotional depth to a genre he saw as obsessed with technology.
Q 18Who plays psychologist Kris Kelvin in Solaris?
Donatas Banionis
The Lithuanian actor was ranked only fourth in Tarkovsky's private ranking of the cast.
Q 19Who plays Hari, the dead wife who reappears aboard the station in Solaris?
Natalya Bondarchuk
She had introduced Tarkovsky to the novel when they were students together, and he first judged her too young for the part.
Q 20Which prize did Solaris win at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival?
The Grand Prix Spécial du Jury
The Sacrifice won the same prize fourteen years later.
Q 24Which real family member appears on screen in the 1975 autobiographical film?
His mother Maria Vishnyakova
His wife Larisa also appears; Margarita Terekhova plays the mother as a young woman.
Q 25Stalker (1979) was loosely based on which novel by the Strugatsky brothers?
Roadside Picnic
Tarkovsky first planned to film their Dead Mountaineer's Hotel instead.
Q 26In Stalker, what lies at the heart of the Zone?
A room that grants innermost desires
The Stalker guides a writer and a professor toward it.
Q 27What is the name of the Stalker's mentor, who grew rich from the Room and then hanged himself?
Porcupine
The trap known as the meat grinder kills anyone the Zone deems unworthy.
Q 28What disaster struck the production of Stalker, forcing almost the whole film to be reshot?
Badly developed negatives ruined the footage
Tarkovsky replaced cinematographer Georgy Rerberg with Alexander Knyazhinsky.
Q 29Near which city were the Zone scenes of Stalker filmed?
Tallinn
Two deserted hydropower plants on the Jägala river served as the main location.
Q 30What has been blamed for the cancer deaths of Tarkovsky, his wife Larisa and actor Anatoly Solonitsyn?
Chemicals from a plant upstream of the location
Sound designer Vladimir Sharun was convinced the location poisoned them.