General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Sacrifice

The Sacrifice (Swedish original title Offret) is a 1986 drama film written and directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, his seventh and final feature. A Swedish, French, and United Kingdom co-production led by the Swedish Film Institute with Argos Films, it follows a retired journalist who offers everything he has to God to prevent an outbreak of nuclear war.¹^•² Tarkovsky called the film "a parable" about the individual's responsibility toward world events as a whole.³^•²

Key fact	Detail
Original title / year	Offret, 1986; international title Sacrifice¹
Director and writer	Andrei Tarkovsky, his final feature¹
Runtime and format	149 minutes; 35 mm, 1.66:1, color⁴
Key crew	Cinematography Sven Nykvist; production design Anna Asp; editing Tarkovsky and Michal Leszczylowski; producer Anna-Lena Wibom⁴
Lead cast	Erland Josephson (Alexander), Susan Fleetwood (Adelaide), Allan Edwall (Otto), Gudrun Gisladottir (Maria), Valerie Mairesse (Julia), Sven Wollter (Victor)³
Cannes 1986	Grand Prix Spécial du Jury; Best Artistic Contribution for Sven Nykvist; FIPRESCI Prize; Prize of the Ecumenical Jury; Palme d'Or nominee⁵
Later honors	BAFTA Best Foreign Language Film (1988); Guldbagge for 1986's best film⁶^•²

Spoilers

Plot

Alexander, a journalist and former actor and philosopher, tells his young son how worried he is by the lack of spirituality in modern mankind. On the night of his birthday, as his family gathers at their house, news arrives that the Third World War has broken out. In despair, Alexander prays to God, offering everything he has if only the war does not happen at all.¹ The postman Otto advises him to seduce Maria, the family's maid, who is reputedly a witch; Alexander's pact carries consequences he must then honor, culminating in his burning of his house and possessions.⁷ The film closes with an image of the boy watering a dead tree, a symbol of hope in the future.⁸

Interpretation and standing

Commentators have read the film as a synthesis of Tarkovsky's recurring concerns: the poetic memory of Mirror, the spiritual reflection of Andrei Rublev, and the meditation on time in Solaris, converging in a final statement in which art and life merge.⁹ Tarkovsky himself explained his purpose in making it: "I wanted to show that man can restore his links by renewing his covenant with the source of his soul."¹⁶ A 4K restoration returned the film to cinemas for its fortieth anniversary.¹⁷

Production

Tarkovsky, an exile from the Soviet Union, shot the film in Sweden on the island of Gotland, in a Scandinavian landscape of changing skies, solitary trees, and gray seas that matches the story's meditative, near-apocalyptic tone.²^•⁹ He worked with several close collaborators of Ingmar Bergman, most notably the cinematographer Sven Nykvist, Bergman's longtime director of photography, and the cast included the Bergman regular Erland Josephson.¹⁰ Roger Ebert, the Chicago Sun-Times critic, observed that the film at moments looks uncannily like a work by Bergman, and judged the resemblance intentional: Tarkovsky was working with Bergman's materials and subjects on Bergman's home ground.¹⁰

The music includes Johann Sebastian Bach's "Erbarme dich" from the St Matthew Passion at the opening and close, together with pieces by the shakuhachi player Watazumido Shuso.³^•¹¹

The burning of the house. The climactic scene, in which Alexander burns his house, was filmed twice. Tarkovsky insisted on shooting it with a single camera, but the camera failed partway through the take and the house burnt to the ground with the shot unfinished. The production built a new house, and on the second attempt the scene was recorded with two cameras at once as a precaution.³^•² The film's editor Michal Leszczylowski later described the year he spent working with Tarkovsky, who fell ill shortly after shooting concluded, in a Sight and Sound account.¹²

Tarkovsky's illness and the film's dedication

Tarkovsky was diagnosed with lung cancer in December 1985, when the film was already in late editing, and he completed it from his sickbed before dying on 29 December 1986 in Paris.²^•¹³ Because the film's apocalyptic subject matter led many viewers to assume he knew he was dying while making it, the Turner Classic Movies profile by James Steffen, a scholar of Russian cinema, stresses that The Sacrifice was not conceived as a last testament: Tarkovsky's health began to decline seriously only in November 1985, and he still had projects in mind, including Hoffmaniana, based on the writings of E. T. A. Hoffmann, and an adaptation of Hamlet.³

The film is dedicated to Tarkovsky's son Andrei. Father and son had been separated by the Soviet authorities, and the son was permitted to leave the USSR only after his father's cancer diagnosis; he traveled to Cannes and accepted the festival award on his father's behalf.³^•¹⁴

Awards

At the 1986 Cannes Film Festival the film received the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury, the prize for the best artistic contribution (awarded to Sven Nykvist for the cinematography), the FIPRESCI International Critics' Prize, and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, while being nominated for the Palme d'Or, which went to Roland Joffé's The Mission.⁵^•¹⁵ The Swedish Film Institute records that no single film had previously received so many awards at one Cannes festival.² In Sweden the film won the Guldbagge for 1986's best film and was named best film of the year by the Swedish Film Critics Association; Erland Josephson won the 1987 Guldbagge for Best Actor, shared with his performance in Amorosa.²^•⁶ In 1988 the British Academy of Film and Television Arts named it Best Foreign Language Film.⁶

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1980s › Released 1986 to 1989

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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