Firebird

Firebird (2021) is a military drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Peeter Rebane and set on a Soviet air force base in the late 1970s. Two men find each other in a place where that carries a death sentence.

Tom Prior plays conscript Sergey; Oleg Zagorodnii plays Roman, the fighter pilot he falls for. Diana Pozharskaya is Luida, the female officer caught between them — someone who understands exactly what is happening and chooses to protect them both. Prior wrote the screenplay himself, adapting the real memoir of Sergey Fetisov, a former Soviet serviceman who recorded what he lived through. The film is a co-production between Estonia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, shot largely on location in Estonia.

Firebird is one of the rare fiction features to address queer lives inside the Soviet military with this degree of directness. Watch it online on iFILM.