Stalker (Russian: ; IPA: [ st lkj r]) is a 1979 science fiction film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, with a screenplay written by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, loosely based on their novel Roadside Picnic. It depicts an expedition led by the Stalker to bring his two clients to a site known as the Zone, which has the supposed potential to fulfill a person's innermost desires. The title of the film, which is the same in Russian and English, is derived from the English word to stalk in the long-standing meaning of approaching furtively, much like a hunter. In the film a stalker is a professional guide to the zone, someone who crosses the border into the forbidden zone with a specific goal.[2] The word was actually coined by the Strugatsky brothers for their novel "Roadside Picnic" (1972), as an allusion to Rudyard Kipling's character Stalky from the "Stalky Co." stories. (stlki) was well remembered by the Strugatskys from their childhood, when they read the stories in Russian translation. In the "Roadside Picnic", was a common nickname for men engaged in the illegal trade of prospecting for and smuggling of alien artifacts from the mysterious and dangerous "Zone".