One of the least known of Gitai’s feature films, The Petrified Garden was shot in Leningrad at the time that city was becoming St. Petersburg again. The story, co-written by Gitai with the great Italian screenwriter and poet Tonio Guerra, concerns an art dealer who travels to post-Soviet Russia in search of the Golem. This quest for the mythical figure becomes a search for meaning, but the prospects of finding either are remote. The film features a score by Simon and Markus Stockhausen, sons of the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.