Alexander, a journalist, philosopher and retired actor, celebrates a birthday with friends and family when it is announced that nuclear war has begun.
Ratings
Curator score: 9.2/10
IMDb: 7.9/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 88%
Metacritic: 85
TMDB: 7.7/10
Director
Andrei Tarkovsky
Production
Faragó Film, Svenska Filminstitutet
Cast
Erland Josephson, Susan Fleetwood, Allan Edwall, Guðrún Gísladóttir, Sven Wollter, Valérie Mairesse, Filippa Franzén, Tommy Kjellqvist, Per Källman, Tommy Nordahl, Tintin Anderzon, Jane Friedmann, Helena Brodin, Martin Lindström, Birgit Carlstén, Jan-Olof Strandberg, Christian Jarder
Where to watch
Klassiki, Kino Film Collection
Curator Review
Verdict
A profound, uncompromising farewell from Tarkovsky: meditative, apocalyptic, and spiritually charged, with a final stretch that turns private anguish into a devastating moral fable. It’s demanding, but for viewers open to slow cinema, philosophical drama, and existential dread, it’s essential.
Best for
fans of slow cinema and long takes
viewers drawn to spiritual or philosophical dramas
people interested in apocalyptic stories with emotional and moral weight
Tarkovsky, Bergman, and Malick admirers
those who appreciate films that blend realism with dreamlike symbolism
Skip if
you want fast pacing or clear plot mechanics
you dislike ambiguity and symbolic storytelling
you’re looking for conventional war or disaster-movie thrills
you prefer emotionally light or easily digestible dramas
Overview
The Sacrifice is Tarkovsky at his most austere and most intimate. Built around a birthday gathering that is shattered by the news of nuclear war, it becomes less a disaster film than a crisis of conscience: what does a life devoted to thought, art, and belief actually owe to other people?
Worth noting
The film moves with patient, ceremonial gravity, but it is never static. Tarkovsky folds domestic tension, spiritual longing, and a sense of civilization’s fragility into images that feel both earthly and metaphysical. The result is a work of mourning, prayer, and self-interrogation, anchored by a performance that makes Alexander feel like a man bargaining with history, God, and his own guilt.
Bottom line
It can be severe, even punishing, if you come expecting narrative momentum. But if you meet it on its own terms, the film’s final movement lands with extraordinary force. It is one of cinema’s great meditations on sacrifice, faith, and the terrifying possibility that love is the only meaningful answer left.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Eli Hayes (5★) · 1932 likes
"I see it as my duty to stimulate reflection on what is essentially human and eternal in each individual soul, and which all too often a person will pass by, even though his fate lies in his hands. He is too busy chasing after phantoms and bowing down to idols.
In the end everything can be reduced to the one simple element which is all a person can count upon in his existence:
The Capacity to Love.
That element can… more
Sam Jalali (5★) · 1569 likes
There’s no way around it, The Sacrifice feels like a farewell. Not just to cinema, but to life itself. Tarkovsky, standing at the edge of his own mortality, crafts a film that aches with the weight of a man reflecting on everything he has given away for his art, for his faith, for some fleeting sense of transcendence. Watching it, I couldn’t shake the thought that this wasn’t just another film, it was Tarkovsky’s own prayer, his last confession.
From its… more
Sally Jane Black · 1168 likes
Like John Huston's The Dead, Tarkovsky's final film addresses regret. Having spent his days crafting ideas, speaking his mind, and ultimately sacrificing his life for art, Tarkovsky bows out with a film that, among other things, demands to know why no one takes action. At the same time, it feels like an apologia of his leaving behind his family and pursuing his filmmaking in Italy and Sweden, and it is an expression of deep, profound faith. It staggers me to… more Like John Huston's The Dead, Tarkovsky's final film addresses regret. Having spent his days crafting ideas, speaking his mind, and ultimately sacrificing his life for art, Tarkovsky bows out with a film that, among other things, demands to know why no one takes action. At the same time, it feels like an apologia of his leaving behind his family and pursuing his filmmaking in Italy and Sweden, and it is an expression of deep, profound faith. It staggers me to… more
Eli Hayes (5★) · 988 likes
“In the beginning was the
Word. Why is that, Papa?"
Darren Carver-Balsiger (5★) · 701 likes
Spoilers from second paragraph onwards
The Sacrifice is almost an oddity amongst Tarkovsky's seven features. It isn't historical or overtly science-fiction or brazenly experimental. Instead it's mostly a Bergman-esque chamber piece with philosophical musings. Of course The Sacrifice is still so distinctive that only Tarkovsky could have made it, but it just feels different somehow in a way I can't explain. Like all of Tarkovsky's movies, it is slow and methodical, and yet still naturalistic and poetic. Through many fantastic long… more