Trivia for
Stalker (1979) More at IMDbPro »

• The insignia on the police officers' helmet features two letters: AT, the initials of the director, Andrei Tarkovsky.
  
  
• The Zone of the film was inspired by a nuclear accident that took place near Chelyabinsk in 1957. Several hundred square kilometers were polluted by fallout and abandoned; of course there was no official mention of this forbidden zone at the time.
  
  
• The original negatives were destroyed (by a processing error at the laboratory) and the film had to be shot again from scratch with a new director of photography.
  
  
• It is said that the rushes of the first version of the film were kept by editor Lyudmila Feiginova in her home for years. They were destroyed by fire, that also claimed her life.
  
  
• Towards the end of the movie, the Stalker's wife smokes cigarettes from a carton that bears the same AT (Andrei Tarkovsky) insignia as the policeman's helmet.
  
  
• When the Stalker is referred to as 'Chingachgook' and 'Leatherstocking', these are references to characters in James Fenimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans".
  
  

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