In Among Gray Stones, Kira Muratova crafts a dreamlike coming-of-age tale, adapted from a short story by legendary Ukrainian writer Vladimir Korolenko. Reeling from the death of his beloved mother and the negligence of his father (Stanislav Govorukhin), a powerful judge, ten-year-old Vasya (Igor Sharapov) forms a friendship with Valyok (Roman Levchenko) and Marusya (Oksana Shlapak), vagabond children who have taken refuge with a homeless man (Sergei Popov) in a crumbling church. Exposed to the desperate circumstances of a people whom he never knew existed, and enlivened by his new companions’ generosity and compassion, Vasya steals his sister’s porcelain doll to comfort the dying Marusya, setting his real and surrogate families on a potentially tragic collision course. Surreal, humanistic, and shot through with the endless wonder of childhood discovery, Among Gray Stones stands as one of Kira Muratova’s finest achievements, despite being re-edited by Soviet censors.