Film
Nostalghia
Ностальгия
A Russian writer travels through Tuscany researching an eighteenth-century composer who returned home and destroyed himself. In a spa town he meets Domenico, a man his neighbours consider mad, who has been waiting for someone willing to carry a lit candle across the empty thermal pool.
About
Andrei Tarkovsky made Nostalghia in Italy in 1983, with Tonino Guerra as co-writer and RAI money, and did not go home again — he defected the following year and made only The Sacrifice before his death in 1986. The film shared Best Director at Cannes and took the FIPRESCI and Ecumenical prizes; Soviet authorities lobbied against a Palme, which Tarkovsky always believed cost him it.
Oleg Yankovsky plays Gorchakov, a poet researching a Russian composer's Italian years, accompanied by an interpreter, Eugenia, played by Domiziana Giordano. In a Tuscan spa town he becomes fixated on Domenico — Erland Josephson, imported from Bergman's company — who once locked his family indoors for seven years and now proposes an errand involving a candle and a drained pool.
Giuseppe Lanci shot it, sliding between colour and monochrome, and the film's subject is homesickness in the specific Russian sense the title names: not longing for a place but the illness of being away from it. Tarkovsky said it was the most autobiographical thing he made. Of his seven features this is the one most often left out of introductions, and the one that repays a second viewing most.
Where to Watch
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Streaming availability via JustWatch. Last checked 2026-08-30.
Top Cast
Oleg Yankovskiy
Andrei Gorchakov
Erland Josephson
Domenico
Domiziana Giordano
Eugenia
Patrizia Terreno
Andrei's Wife
Laura De Marchi
Chambermaid
Awards, Festivals & Mentions
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Winner × 3 — Cannes prizes: Best Director (Andrei Tarkovsky), FIPRESCI Prize, Prize of the Ecumenical Jury
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Nominee — Palme d'Or — Cannes Film Festival (1983)
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Cannes Film Festival 1983 — In Competition
