In 1977, when Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union, Russian actor Sergey Fetisov arrived at a military base to perform his military service. He wanted to finish soon the process to settle in Moscow and start his career in theater. But suddenly he wished that his stay would last forever: he began a romance, which literally transformed his life, with a fighter pilot. His memoir, History of Roman, tells that essential moment in his life and were taken to the cinema in Firebird, a film that opens on Friday, April 22 in the United Kingdom and on 29 in the United States and Canada.
The British Tom Prior (Kingsman: The Secret Service, The Theory of Everything) and the Ukrainian Oleg Zagorodnii (currently in Kiev, where he operates as a café as he can while waiting to be called to fight) are the protagonists of this feature debut by Estonian Peeter Rebane, which received six awards when he went through festivals. They applauded her in London during BFI Flare, in Los Angeles during Outfest and in Toronto during Inside Out Film Festival, among other cities. But not in Moscow.
While homosexual relations ceased to be illegal in Russia in 1993, stigma and discrimination are hard to kill. It does not help that laws were enacted in 2013 against “homosexual propaganda”, which remain in place despite the rejection they caused and declared discriminatory by the European Court of Human Rights in 2017.
Prior was surprised that the Moscow Film Festival accepted Firebird, he told MovieWeb. “We thought, 'Gee, there's real progress there, we're about to see a real change in Russia's political position on its LGBTQ+ communities. ' But then the first screening was made and the state prosecutor's office received a letter saying that it should be eliminated from the festival.”
The actor recalled protesters with posters that read “Enough homosexual propaganda” and almost a hundred press articles in which it was said “that the film was horrible and that it dishonored the festival.” In The Guardian he evoked some of the titles: “An Estonian, a British and a Ukrainian shame Moscow” and “A punch in the face of the Russian soldier”, among them.
“Basically, the festival suspended ticket sales,” Rebane added to MovieWeb. “The film was screened in an empty auditorium, something very sad. That shows the extent to which things are wrong and why I think this film is important, particularly in the light of the last six weeks and what is happening,” he said, referring to Russia's attack on Ukraine.
Zagorodnii, who plays the fighter pilot, Roman, who is engaged in his upward career until the moment he crosses paths with the young soldier, also spoke to The Guardian from Kiev, in a video call sitting at a table in his cafeteria. “Only me left, there are no baristas,” he said. Twice he tried to join the army, but was told he should wait: there are more volunteers than equipment for now. Use their social accounts to request bulletproof vests, military gear and food.
“My agent got me the part in Firebird,” he said. “But now he supports Russian aggression.”
In addition to acting alongside Zagorodnii as young Sergey, Prior worked the script together with Rebane. In 2016, a year before Fetisov's death, they went to Moscow to talk to him about his memoirs. They committed to their only request: that it be a story about love, not politics. “A universal story about what it means to look for love at any cost,” Prior quoted it.
But some peculiarities of the Cold War years make it very difficult to separate the issues. The story that begins almost inadvertently, when Sergey tells Roman that he has never been to the ballet and the pilot invites him to see — hence the title of the film — Igor Stravinsky's The Firebird faces the politics of the moment: an anonymous complaint informs the military authorities about the romance and Roman faces the possibility of being discharged and sent to the Gulag for five years. The film goes from Top Gun to Secret on the Mountain, in an atmosphere of The Life of Others.
Diana Pozharskaya and bJake Henderson work alongside Prior and Zagorodnii, and the cast of Firebird is completed by Margus Prangel, Nicholas Woodeson, Ester Kuntu and Kaspar Velberg.
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