✶The Sacrifice (Swedish: Offret) is a 1986 drama film written and directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. The Sacrifice centers on a middle-aged intellectual who attempts to bargain with God to stop an impending nuclear holocaust. The film combines pagan and Christian religious themes; Tarkovsky called it a "parable".
He was diagnosed with cancer after filming concluded, and by 1986, was unable to attend its presentation at the Cannes Film Festival due to his illness. Like 1972's Solaris by Tarkovsky, The Sacrifice also won the Grand Prix at the Cannes.
Tarkovsky considered The Sacrifice different from his earlier films because, while his recent films had been "impressionistic in structure", in this case he not only "aimed...to develop [its] episodes in the light of my own experience and of the rules of dramatic structure", but also to "[build] the picture into a poetic whole in which all the episodes were harmoniously linked", and because of this, it "took on the form of a poetic parable".
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