Andrei Rublev

Andrei Rublev (1966) is Andrei Tarkovsky's historical epic, available to watch online on iFILM. It unfolds across early-15th-century Russia — a land torn by feuding princes, Tatar raids and famine — around an icon painter whose actual life survives only in fragments.

Rather than a straight biography, the film arrives as eight loosely linked episodes spread over roughly twenty-five years. Rublev, played by Anatoly Solonitsyn, wanders from monastery to monastery, argues with the painter Theophanes the Greek about sin and the duty of an artist, and lives through the sack of Vladimir and the burning of holy images. Shaken by the slaughter he sees and by blood on his own hands, he takes a vow of silence and abandons his work for years. His return comes only at the end, sparked by a stranger's struggle to cast an enormous bell.

Tarkovsky shot it in long, patient takes with little music, and Soviet authorities shelved the picture for years, wary of its violence and faith. That makes the final shift into color — onto Rublev's real frescoes and icons — land even harder. This is slow, demanding cinema for viewers willing to watch beauty emerge from a brutal age. Stream Andrei Rublev (1966) online on iFILM.