Shooting has begun in Moscow of Russian director Ksenia Ratushnaya’s feature debut Outlaw. The film’s LGBT subject matter is set to attract controversy in Russia where the distribution of a film that depicts a homosexual relationship can attract heavy fines.

Victor Tarasenko, Lisa Kashintseva, and Gleb Kalyuzhny star in the film that takes place in modern day Moscow and the Soviet Union of the 1980s. It tells the story of a high-school student who is coming to terms with his awakening homosexuality and a mysterious girl he befriends. Both are trying to attract the attention of the most popular boy in the school.

The number of recent Russian films with a gay storyline can be counted on one hand: Olga Stolpovskaya and Dmitry Troitsky’s lyrical comedy You I Love was a sensation when it screened at the Berlinale’s Panorama in 2004. It was credited as the first Russian film on the subject of homosexuality or bisexuality.

Six years later, Felix Mikhailov’s Jolly Fellows became the first Russian film set in the country’s drag queen subculture, and was the first Russian film to open Berlin’s Panorama in 2010. Sergey Taramaev and Lubov Lvova’s Winter Journey, about a whirlwind love affair between two men received a limited release and festival play in 2013. Read more via ScreenDaily