Ivan’s Childhood

Few debuts match the unequivocal power of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood, a technical tour-de-force of flying crane shots, absurd angles, and arresting lighting merged with a powerful tale of war, violence, and childhood. Few are left alive along the Russian/German front of World War II, but twelve-year-old Ivan still moves, and still stalks, a young child turned into a “soldier boy.” Wandering through bombed-out ruins, birch forests, and frozen lands, Ivan is both hero and monster, innocence and decline, his only solace the memories of a mother long since missing. Ivan’s Childhood won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival.