ANDREI RUBLEV (1966) | Andrei Tarkovsky

Imagine standing in the Vatican, gazing up at the Sistine Chapel ceiling — but the fresco is missing. In its place, a blank, unbroken white. The work existed, once. But no one thought it worthy of preservation.

That is the fate of the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky — and of his 1966 masterpiece, Andrei Rublev.

Regarded by critics and filmmakers as one of the greatest films ever made, Andrei Rublev is not available in a single major museum in the world. You will not find it enshrined in the Louvre. It is not on permanent display in MoMA. No curated space reveres it the way we revere Rembrandt, Van Gogh, or Michelangelo. And yet, Tarkovsky’s Rublev belongs among them.

What is Andrei Rublev?

It is a towering, metaphysical fresco rendered in time — a film that expands cinema into an art of spiritual immensity. Set in 15th-century Russia during an era of social upheaval, the film follows the life of icon painter Andrei Rublev. But this is no historical biopic. Tarkovsky's Rublev is not merely a man. He is a symbol — of the artist, the seeker, the soul who witnesses suffering yet continues to create.

Like an epic religious painting, the film spans plague, war, cruelty, beauty, silence, and grace. But its structure is elliptical, fragmentary, modernist — more akin to the narrative innovations of Joyce or Eisenstein than any conventional story arc. Its final, silent section — the casting of a massive bell by a boy who may be lying about his knowledge — is among the most transcendent sequences in cinema history. It ends with actual images of Rublev’s icons: colour after nearly three hours of black and white.

Why This Film Must Be Preserved

Andrei Rublev is monumental in the way Anselm Kiefer’s paintings are monumental — not merely in scale, but in philosophical scope. It wrestles with questions of art, faith, suffering, and divine purpose. It is cinema as sacred icon, a vision that lifts the medium from entertainment to revelation.

To let it fade — or to keep it buried in DVD collections, scattered retrospectives, or academic obscurity — is to deprive humanity of one of its finest works of spiritual art. Tarkovsky’s Rublev deserves to be permanently enshrined, exhibited, and preserved alongside the great religious artworks of all time.

Let This Be Its Gallery

The Cinema Sanctum’s Lost Gallery begins here — with Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev. As in the halls of the Hermitage or the Uffizi, let us create a gallery of light and shadow, where cinema’s forgotten masters may at last be seen.

We do not offer entertainment. We offer reverence.

The Lost Gallery is not about nostalgia. It is about justice.

Help us build the sanctum that museums have failed to create.

Andrei Rublev now stands among the greats.

Let us honour him there.