As small kids in occupied Estonia, my best friend and I would cycle near that same base. “I could never have imagined that this kind of love story was happening there at that time. The knowledge that Sergey and Roman were falling in love in the very place where he grew up has given him, he says, a new perspective on LGBT people in his home country. “But even by the time I came out to my mother in my early 20s, her first reaction was still, ‘It’s OK, we can get help.’” After it was decriminalised with the fall of the Soviet Union, it was still seen as abnormal.” Rebane knew he was gay at the age of nine. “I was amazed,” says the 48-year-old film-maker. Rebane first encountered Fetisov’s book a decade ago. In hindsight, it helped that they were forced to communicate through looks and gestures at first, because that’s how it would have been between Sergey and Roman.” Oleg has this matter-of-fact fighter-pilot quality.
“It wasn’t just Oleg’s look but the way he held himself,” he says. Even after decriminalisation, it was still seen as abnormalĭespite the initial language barrier between the two leads, the Estonian director Peeter Rebane knew Zagorodnii would be perfect as Roman.
He wrote to me, ‘Oleg, keep it easy, we will make you free from Zelenskiy and then we will live in a normal friendly country.’ He thinks America is doing all this! That is when we stop our discussion.” Being gay was a criminal offence. “But now I want to shame him because he supports this Russian aggression. “My agent found me the job on Firebird,” he continues. The war is never far from our conversation. “So now, if someone gives me a gun, I know what to do with it.” He also had to do five days of shooting practice. “I knew only, ‘Hello, I am Oleg from Ukraine, my English very bad,’” recalls the actor.
When Zagorodnii landed the part, it was on the condition that he could master English in the three months before shooting began. Very suggestive hardware … a passionate moment.