Firebird **** (2021, Tom Prior, Oleg Zagorodnii, Nicholas Woodeson, Diana Pozharskaya) – Movie Review

Director Peeter Rebane’s ambitious 2021 romantic drama Firebird is an intelligent, thoughtful, moving and involving true gay love story set against the repressive background of a Soviet Air Force Base in the era of the Cold War. Tom Prior stars as troubled young private Sergey, whose life is turned upside down when daring fighter pilot Roman (Oleg Zagorodnii) arrives at the base.

Sergey and Roman embark on a dangerous forbidden love affair, soon threatened by an escalating KGB investigation, and then a love triangle forms between them and the base commander (Nicholas Woodeson)’s secretary Luisa (Diana Pozharskaya), who is Sergey’s best friend and loves Sergey.

Firebird is co-written in an obvious labour of love by star Tom Prior and director Peeter Rebane, based on true events, with great skill, meaning and clarity, cutting a clear line through a typically untidy real-life story. The acting is strong, with the actors pulling the audience into the characters’ stories, passions and dilemmas, and the meticulous period production is a very considerable achievement. It may be set in the past, but the story’s relevance is very clearly still here in the present.

An Estonia/ UK co-production, it is set in Estonia, then a Soviet republic, and filmed between 5 September 2018 and 1 March 2019 in Estonia, Malta and Russia.

Estonia remained a Soviet republic until 1991, when, along with the other Baltic states, it declared its independence.

Peeter Rebane: ‘The best things in life are not things.’

It is screened at the BFI Flare London LGBTQ+ Film Festival (virtual cinema) from 17 March 2021.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Movie Review

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Tom Prior and Oleg Zagorodnii in Firebird (2021).