More than 80 films were screened during the five days of the Festival having attracted over 13 thousand spectators. Besides the competition programs, the Festival featured broad out-of-competition sections, including Tarkovsky Today, Architecture and Cinema, Music and Cinema, a special program dedicated to the 165th anniversary of Anton Chekhov and the experimental student sections Dear Heart and Small Secrets presented by the Design School of the Higher School of Economics.
Besides the Museum and Exhibition Center and the oldest Lodz cinema, an art space in the railway station actively worked on two days of the Festival offering a reading hall with free access to everyone. Together with BOMBORA publishing house, the Festival prepared a cozy space where one could flip through and read books about cinema, theater, directing and art in general. The reading hall also hosted an exhibition of costume illustrations for Andrey Tarkovsky's films prepared by students and teachers of the sewing product design department of Ivanovo State Polytechnic University. It featured thoroughly recreated costume replicas from Andrey Tarkovsky's key films: Andrey Rublev, Solaris, The Mirror, Stalker, The Sacrifice.
One of the key events within the educational program of the Festival was the creative meeting with the photo artist and cinematographer Grigory Verkhovsky as part of the presentation of the book Stalker of Andrey Tarkovsky in Photographs by Grigory Verkhovsky. Verkhovsky took part in the making of this legendary film in 1978. Also, the program included a presentation of the book by Lilia Klassen Going the Stalker Way telling the story of how this iconic Tarkovsky's film was made.
On June 28, as part of its finale IV Russian National Video Art Competition Tarkovsky's Worlds organized by ROSIZO defined winners in seven nominations. The winners by category are: House of Stains by Ekaterina Kravchuk (Love category, Moscow), Dreamer by Dmitry Zuev (Childhood, Balashikha Moscow region), Encounter with Childhood by Ekaterina Chichina (Nostalgia, Moscow), I/O by Roman Isaev and Vitaly Ageenkov (Space, Saratov), White White Evening by Anna Putenis (Landscape, Moscow). The work Manifestation by Sergey Kozintsev (Moscow) won in the Sleep nomination and Polina Guryeva's (Ryazan) Donkey Eating Oat took the prize in the Philosophy category.
The Festival also featured a ROSIZO exhibition Vision of Non-Existence, the title of which was inspired by Galina Zelenskaya's cinema research article about Andrey Tarkovsky's film Ivan's Childhood. The expo mainly consisted of fine art objects from ROSIZO collection and Mosfilm's photo materials depicting the most expressive stills from the film Ivan's Childhood. The exhibition will be available at the Ivanovo D. Burylin State History and Regional Studies Museum until the end of this summer.
The Obyekt. Obyekt gallery in Palekh presented the multimedia project by Anna Kuznetsova and the WHITEMOUSE group Tarkovsky's Dog. It refers to how its authors met Dakus the sheep dog, which remained in Andrey Tarkovsky's house after his departure in 1985. The project is dedicated to the bright memories of Marina Tarkovskaya (1934-2024), a writer and memoirist.
The opening of the Festival traditionally took place in Yuryevets, the native town of Andrey Tarkovsky. Andrey Merzlikin, the Honored Artist of Russia, hosted the ceremony. More than a thousand guests came together in the town square on June 27 to watch the Festival opening and listen to a concert by Yulia Peresild and the MANDRAGORA band.