Mirror

Andrei Tarkovsky drew on memories of a rural childhood before WWII for this personal, impressionistic and unconventional film poem.

For perhaps his most daring experimentation with film structure, Tarkovsky intersperses scenes from three eras – a childhood in the countryside, the Great War, and post-war maturity – to create a prismatic reflection of his own life and those of his parents.

Abandoning linear narrative in favour of dramatising discontinuous shards of memory, Tarkovsky pioneered a poetic and richly allusive form. Ranked joint 31st in the 2022 Sight and Sound Great Films of All Time poll.