One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich is a 2000 French documentary film directed by Chris Marker, about and an homage to the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. The film was an episode of the French documentary film series Cinéastes de notre temps (Filmmakers of our time), which in over ninety episodes since 1966 concentrates on individual film directors, film people and film movements. The title of the film is a play on the title of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

Plot

The film combines clips from Tarkovsky's films with footage of Tarkovsky on the set of his last film The Sacrifice and on his deathbed, during the final stage of his battle with cancer. The film mostly relies on images, with only sparse commentary, and concentrates mainly on giving insight into Tarkovsky's work and philosophy and on exploring the intersections between his private life and his work. The film starts with a scene from Tarkovsky first film Ivan's Childhood and ends with a parallel scene from his last film The Sacrifice. It shows the reunion of Tarkovsky with his son Andrei Jr., who had been allowed to leave the Soviet Union only after Tarkovsky was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Apart from Andrei Tarkovsky himself the film shows, among others, his second wife Larisa Tarkovskaya, his son Andrei Jr., the editor of the film The Sacrifice Michal Leszczylowski, the French actress Valérie Mairesse, the Swedish cinematographer Sven Nykvist and the Russian actress Margarita Terekhova.