Andrei Rublev

In production for a whole month before Nikita Khrushchev was deposed as head of the Soviet State and the cultural thaw he had led was forcibly ended, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev was a thorn in the side of the Soviet authorities for years. Explicitly religious with a clear-eyed look at the oppressive nature of Russian history, it was far from the sort of nationalistic fanfare about a Russian hero of the arts the authorities wanted for propaganda purposes. Finished in 1966, but not releas...