He recently spoke with PASSPORT via Zoom to discuss bringing Fetisov’s story to screen, shooting a love scene in the chilly Baltic Sea, and which fellow out actor he’d love to share an onscreen romance with. He trained at England’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA), and also counts Kingsmen: The Secret Service (2014), Iceland Is Best (2016), and last year’s dramatization of the 1919 Sette Giugno uprising in Malta against the British, Blood On The Crown, among his movie credits. Firebird’s screenings overseas have already struck nerves back in Russia, where according to the press notes some headlines read “A Brit, an Estonian and a Ukrainian Shame the Moscow International Film Festival.” Bots have attacked the film’s website, and the filmmakers have received death threats from ultra-nationalists.Ĭurrently dividing his time between England and Estonia, Prior was Attitude Magazine’s February cover boy. Rebane and Prior, who first met in 2014, spent time interviewing Fetisov in Moscow during the two-plus years they fashioned the script (Fetisov died in 2017 following an illness-related surgery: more on his story can be read here).
