This was Andrey Tarkovsky's first film directed outside of the USSR. It was supposed to be filmed in Italy with the support of Mosfilm, with most of the dialogue in Italian. When Mosfilm support was inexplicably withdrawn, Tarkovsky used part of the budget provided by Italian State Television and French film company Gaumont to complete the film in Italy and cut some Russian scenes from the screenplay, while recreating Russian locations for other scenes in Italy.
At one point, Domenico questions mathematics, displaying that "1+1 not equals 2" with two drops of olive oil. This is a reference to a scene in one of co-writer Tonino Guerra's collaborations with Michelangelo Antonioni, Red Desert (1964).
The title of the film is the Russian rendition of the Italian pronunciation for the word 'nostalgia'. This was a deliberate choice on the part of Tarkovsky.
Andrei Tarkovsky intended to cast his favorite actor, Anatoliy Solonitsyn, in the lead role of this film, but Solonitsyn died prematurely from cancer in 1982.
Tolia Solonitsyne wasn't an option for the leading role because he was fighting cancer. Actually, the first choice was Alexander Kaidanovsky, but the government didn't allow him to work in Italy. The second choice was Jean-Louis Trintignant; they met in 1982, both excited by the project. Unfortunately, because the producer, Francesco Casati, didn't make a contract with the actor, Trintignant went to replace Patrick Dewaere after he committed suicide, for the leading role in "Vivement Dimanche" by François Truffaut.
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