There's a poignant moment in an interview with the terminally ill production designer Rashit Satiullin, who, when asked about the Zone, recalls the time he spent living, working and talking with Tarkovsky: 'Here you live being your inmost self … it's somwhere where you can talk with somebody, something unfathomable'. The interviewer asks him to clarify. Does he mean …? 'Yes speaking with god. When Andrei was no more I was bereaved of a person with whom I could talk about the most important things. That room vanished'. 'So he was the Room to you?', asks the interviewer. 'Yes'.

Geoff Dyer, Zona