In a treacherous post-apocalyptic wasteland known only as "The Zone," a mystically gifted "stalker" guides two intellectuals to a mysterious room that it is rumoured can make wishes come true. The great Andrei Tarkovsky’s second sci-fi outing after the classic Solaris is an enigmatic and strikingly stylized odyssey into a world at once alien and disturbingly familiar.
Notes
Please note that the screening of STALKER as part of the Attack the Bloc: Cold War Science Fiction from Behind the Iron Curtain programme, to take place on Saturday January 21, 2012 has had a start time change. The film will now screen at
3:00 PM (instead of 3:30 PM). We apologize for any inconveniences this may cause.
The world has been ravaged by an unknown apocalypse, the force of the destruction so great that reality itself has become distorted in an area known simply as the Zone. Heavily guarded by the military, the Zone reportedly contains a room that makes one's greatest dreams come true; but to breach the fortifications and survive the Zone's warped physics and deadly traps, one requires the services of a "Stalker," a special guide with a unique knowledge of this bizarre terrain. Acquiring the help of one such Stalker (Alexander Kaidanovsky), two nameless intellectuals known simply as the Writer (Anatoly Solonitsyn) and the Professor (Nikolai Grinko) venture into the Zone in search of the room — but are they looking to realize their dreams or destroy them? Loosely adapted from a novel by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, Andrei Tarkovsky's mesmerizing sci-fi allegory is rightly revered as a classic of world cinema.