The famous Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky once described the experience of exile for a Russian as “nostalghia” – he insisted that the word not be translated into proper English, but rather retain the Italian translation of the Russian word "??????????." For Tarkovsky, who evinced a peculiar brand of medievalist Russian nationalism throughout his work, a Russian leaving their homeland would experience a form of spiritual and physical death; and, indeed, the central character, the semi-autobiographical poet, Andrei Gorchakov, does actually die at the end of his film Nostalghia.
