by Nathaniel R
New gay film to tell you about. Roadside Attractions will be releasing the Cold War romantic drama Firebirds, on April 29th in theaters. Inspired by a true story, it involves the forbidden gay romance of a soldier and a pilot fighter in Estonia during the 1970s. British actor Tom Prior (Kingsman: Secret Service, The Theory of Everything) plays the Russian soldier and Ukrainian actor Oleg Zagorodnii plays the pilot fighter. Though the cast is international and it's shot in English the director, Peeter Rebane, making his narrative feature debut, is from Estonia...
It's wonderful to note that at least one of the actors here is gay. Tom Prior, who is 32, is openly gay and cowrote the film with the director.
We're glad this story is being told. 1977 when the film is set is not all that long ago in the course of history. It's sometimes alarming to note how cavalier queer people in the US are about their civil rights since a) we haven't had them for very long and b) they can easily be taken away given the far-right makeup of the Supreme Court at this juncture in history! What's more there are many places around the world where homosexuality is still a criminal offense. We know -- relevant to this film of course -- that countries from the former Soviet Union are often danger zones for queer people as we've seen on the news and in brilliant contemporary films like Welcome to Chechnya and And Then We Danced.
Firebird has been popular at LGBTQ film festivals. Will it be treated as warmly by regular critics in release? We shall see.