Something went wrong
Try again later.
Ivan's Childhood
When Nazi invaders destroy his Russian village and kill his family, twelve year old Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev works for the Soviet army as a scout behind the German lines and strikes a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers.
18 June 1941, Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia]
20 August 1937, Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia]
26 February 1941, Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia]
12 December 1926, Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia]
22 May 1920, Kherson, Ukrainian SSR [now Ukraine]
12 May 1923, Peschanoye, Ryazan Governorate, RSFSR, USSR [now Ryazan Oblast, Russia]
21 February 1899, Slavyansk, Izyum uyezd, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire [now Slovyansk, Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine]
August 9, 1930 in Ivanovskaya oblast, USSR
14 February 1910, village Gorodok, Vyazma uyezd, Smolensk Governorate, Russian Empire [now Vyazemsky District, Smolensk Oblast, Russia]
21 April 1938, Saratov, Russian SFSR, USSR [now Russia]
28 April 1954, Makhachkala, Dagestanskaya ASSR, USSR
3 August 1946, Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia]
May 19, 2016
Tarkovsky pays full attention to the squalor and pity of war but never loses his sense of poetry.February 01, 2016
It was the caveat of the profound possibilities of eastern cinema, effectively heralding the discovery of one of the most perceptive minds to ever stand behind a movie camera.August 04, 2015
While the emotional weight of Ivan is clear from the first frames -- Tarkovsky doesn't stray from making us feel the pain of Ivan's world -- there is that sense of music the director is so intent on conveying.August 01, 2012
It feels stylistically as fresh as if it had been made yesterday -- even to some very striking use of handheld camerawork. It's really something of a masterpiece.May 25, 2016
The work in which the remarkable nature of [Tarkovsky's] talent first shone through.August 04, 2015
Director Andrei Tarkovsky has mixed daring with poetry in making this film: he shows the Soviet hero as an individual troubled with the doubts and complexities of other humans.May 21, 2016
[A] subdued depiction of warfare as mostly a lot of waiting around for brief explosive action... The orphan kid - who several times describes himself as 'jittery' - is a more openly shell-shocked version of all the adults around him.May 09, 2005
Beauty, poetry and sadness are certainly lodged in its brief dramatic span, to be seized and embraced by anybody who will give a compassionate mind to it.May 19, 2016
Unmissable.May 16, 2016
No other director is simultaneously so precise and so otherworldly.March 11, 2013
Pairing [poetic] images with fragmented characters and Ivan's single-minded desire to get back in the fray, the result is disturbing and affecting.