The World - News from Jan. 19, 1986
A letter by French President Francois Mitterrand to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev was reportedly instrumental in gaining exit visas for the son and mother-in-law of a Soviet emigre film director, Andrei Tarkovsky, Western diplomatic sources and friends of the family said. Tarkovsky, a renowned director lauded among others by Ingmar Bergman, decided with his wife in 1982 to stay in the West after Soviet authorities withheld exit visas for the relatives now about to leave. He went first to Italy, where he was directing the film “Nostalgia,” then in 1984 sought political asylum in France.
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