The great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky has been the subject of many films, but perhaps none as revealing as Sokurov's elegy about Tarkovsky's forced exile from his homeland and the traces of his life and work he left behind. Sokurov: "The film is a subjective perception of the personality of the great filmmaker and his destiny in the context of History. Let me add that our task was to create a special human approach towards the memory and the personality of Tarkovsky. We attempted to treat the footage in a tender and caring way, with kindness. We were not trying to embrace all aspects of Tarkovsky's life and work. We are speaking only about what he has left in his Motherland, and what was going on during those years in the West, where he had to work." Originally intended to mark Tarkovsky's fiftieth birthday, the film ran into disputes with the Soviet Union of Cinematographers over its style and content, and production was halted for many months.