The specialized session “A Night with Arseny and Andrei Tarkovsky,” held as part of the side programs of the 43rd Fajr International Film Festival, took place on Thursday, November 27, at Honar Shahr Aftab Cineplex in Shiraz. The event brought together three speakers who reflected on different aspects of Andrei Tarkovsky’s poetic cinema, with a particular emphasis on sound, poetry, and spiritual structure.
At the beginning of the session, speaker Zahra Mohammadi focused on the pivotal role of Arseny Tarkovsky, the renowned Russian poet and father of Andrei Tarkovsky. She stated, “Arseny Tarkovsky is one of the great poets of Russia, yet he is not well known in Iran.” Mohammadi emphasized that, from Andrei Tarkovsky’s own perspective, his father’s poetry was never merely ornamental. “For Tarkovsky, his father’s poems are not decorative frames,” she explained, “but the semantic backbone of his films.”
Russian filmmaker and film critic Aleksandr Trofimov then shared a personal account of his connection to Tarkovsky. “Tarkovsky has never been a distant figure for me,” he said, adding that twenty years ago he named his youngest son Arseny in honor of Arseny Tarkovsky. Trofimov recalled his time working on an art film in Moscow and recounted a conversation with a collaborator who had previously worked with Tarkovsky. “She told me about Tarkovsky’s strict character and sharp temperament,” Trofimov noted, describing the director as a demanding filmmaker whose decisions could change suddenly.
Trofimov explained that he deliberately avoided repeating familiar interpretations of Tarkovsky’s cinema. “So much has already been said about Tarkovsky,” he remarked, “and I don’t want to repeat what everyone already knows.” Instead, he highlighted Tarkovsky’s deep immersion in human inner states. “Tarkovsky dives into the psychological and spiritual condition of human beings,” he said, arguing that the primary tool of art is the human soul. According to Trofimov, beyond narrative and history lies another artistic domain—poetry. He suggested that the poetry of Arseny Tarkovsky and Andrei Tarkovsky’s intimate relationship with his father’s verses together form a unique artistic universe. He concluded his remarks by encouraging filmmakers to be fearless and uncompromising in their creative approach.
Another speaker, Hossein Nourshargh, centered his talk on sound as the core element of Tarkovsky’s cinema. “Speaking about Tarkovsky without understanding sound will sooner or later lead us to misunderstanding,” he stated. Nourshargh challenged the common description of Tarkovsky as merely a poet of images, arguing that when viewed through a broader cultural lens, his cinema reveals an ancient auditory tradition that predates the art of film. “Before humans spoke or created images, they listened,” he said, adding that the first sound to astonish humanity was the sound of its own voice.
Clarifying his position, Nourshargh explained, “I am not talking about historical continuity, but about structural continuity.” Referring to ancient belief systems, he noted that sound has often been understood as the embodiment of the soul. “In Avestan traditions, sound was the only phenomenon capable of connecting two worlds,” he explained, describing sound as a bridge between the material and the metaphysical.
Nourshargh emphasized that in Tarkovsky’s cinema, sound frequently outweighs image in importance. Quoting Tarkovsky, he noted, “Sound is life. Sound is breath, and as long as sound exists, time exists.” He stressed that this was not merely a poetic metaphor, but a fundamental worldview. “Tarkovsky believed melody to be the destiny of existence,” Nourshargh said, recalling Tarkovsky’s statement in “Sculpting in Time” that art is a prayer recited through sound and light, and that cinema is a continuation of sacred chanting traditions.
He further explained that while sounds such as water, wind, bells, and breathing are material realities, in Tarkovsky’s films they function as carriers of meaning rather than tools of realism. “Tarkovsky does not record sound,” Nourshargh noted. “He searches for it.” According to him, Tarkovsky does not narrate history nor perceive the world as a story, but instead listens to it. “In his films, history and narrative remain on the margins, while sound stands at the center.”
In the final remarks of the session, Zahra Mohammadi returned to Arseny Tarkovsky’s poetic legacy. She noted that for many years Arseny Tarkovsky was primarily known as a translator of Eastern poetry, due to the strong Eastern spirit present in his own work. Reflecting on Russian literary history, she explained that many poets in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries achieved early fame but lived tragically short lives. “Arseny Tarkovsky published his first poetry collection at the age of 55,” she said, emphasizing that his second major poetic period emerged in the 1960s.
Mohammadi added that while much of the poetry of that era was dominated by revolutionary rhetoric, Arseny Tarkovsky’s poems resonated with themes of love, freedom, and individuality. “Preserving one’s individuality and way of thinking was central to Arseny Tarkovsky’s identity,” she stated. Having lived through the eras of Lenin and Stalin, she concluded, Arseny Tarkovsky experienced some of the most oppressive periods in Russian history—times in which the concentration of authoritarian power made artistic creation profoundly difficult.
The 43rd Fajr International Film Festival is currently underway in Shiraz, featuring film screenings, specialized sessions, and cultural events that bring together filmmakers, critics, and cinema enthusiasts from around the world.
