Film debut of Anatoliy Solonitsyn, and the first of four movies he made together with director Andrei Tarkovsky before his death from cancer in 1982. Had Solonitsyn lived, he would also have played protagonist Andrei Gorchakov in Tarkovsky's Nostalghia (1983), as well as star in a project titled 'The Witch' which eventually became Tarkovsky's final production, Le Sacrifice (1986).
For the scene where the cow is on fire, it was covered in an asbestos coat that protected it from actually being burned. But for the scene where the horse falls down the stairs, it was shot in the neck by director Andrei Tarkovsky. The crew acquired the horse from a slaughterhouse where it was going to be shot the next day.
Theophanes the Greek (c. 1340 - c. 1410) was a Greek artist from Constantinople and one of the greatest icon painters of Russia, and was noted as the teacher and mentor of Andrei Rublyov.
Selected by the Vatican in the "religion" category of its list of 45 "great films."
The movie was completed and screened once for a selected audience in Moscow in the winter of 1966, after director Andrei Tarkovsky had edited out 15 minutes of controversial content on ministry orders. However, despite enthusiastic responses from the audience, Soviet censors held back a wide release because "the film's ideological erroneousness is not open to doubt"; they accused the movie of being "anti-historical" by not depicting the rapid development of large Russian cities and the people's struggle against the Mongols. Since Tarkovsky had already cut back his film from 205 to 190 minutes, he initially refused to make further cuts for a wide release. The first official screening of the 190-minute version outside of Russia was at the Cannes film festival in May 1969, where it was enthusiastically received and won the FIPRESCI Award, despite being screened only once outside of competition on the insistence of Soviet officials. A wide national release with international distribution was finally secured in 1971, after influential admirers of Tarkovsky's work pressured the authorities into releasing the film, and after Tarkovsky relented to cut out 4 more minutes to appease the ministry. He later called the final 186-minute version his preferred version of the movie.