Based on the life of a fifteenth-century Russian icon painter, Andrei Rublev uses history to confront the present, investigating not only humanity’s seemingly endless capacity for cruelty, but also the responsibility of an artist to document or protest it. The monk and painter Andrei Rublev, wandering through medieval barbarism and brutality, plays out the dilemmas facing every artist, every human, caught in a world spinning violently out of control. A grandly designed spectacle, Andrei Rublev is an intense exploration of the need for faith—whether in God, in humanity, in a nation, or in art—to make sense of life.