A child at war: Ivan’s Childhood (1962)

By Thomas Mirus and James Majewski ( bio - articles - email ) | Jul 15, 2026 | In Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast

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James and Thomas begin a sub-series on the filmography of Andrei Tarkovsky (whose religious films Andrei Rublev and The Sacrifice they already discussed as part of the Vatican Film List). His first film, Ivan’s Childhood, depicts a young boy, Ivan, who acts as a scout for the Russian army during World War II. Made precocious—and profoundly damaged—by his wartime experience, Ivan is a fascinating and tragic figure brought to life in a remarkable performance by Nikolai Burlyayev.

Tarkovsky begins his career with a film that is understandably more conventional than the rest of his oeuvre—but still plenty unconventional, and in fact serving as a test run for Tarkovsky’s poetic convictions. James and Thomas discuss the director’s views on “poetic links” in cinema expressed in his book Sculpting in Time and instantiated in this film’s dream sequences and evocative landscapes. Tarkovsky believed that poetry comes about when the objective beauty of reality is filtered through the artist’s subjectivity, connected to his own personal associations and feelings, such that the authenticity and density of life somehow appear on screen, in a way that is truly poetic and allows the viewer to take part in the aesthetic experience of the artist.

Music is The Duskwhales, “Take It Back”, used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com