Kateryna Gornostai’s feature debut has secured U.S. distribution following its world premiere at the Berlinale. Altered Innocence snagged rights to “Stop-Zemlia,” a Ukrainian coming-of-age drama. Variety broke the news.

Penned by Gornostai, the pic follows Masha (Maria Fedorchenko), an introverted high school student who sees herself “as an outsider unless she’s hanging out with her two best friends, Yana (Yana Isaienko) and Senia (Arsenii Markov), who share her non-conformist status. While trying to navigate through her last year of school, Masha falls in love in a way that forces her out of her comfort zone,” the source hints.

“To recreate the school life, we needed to gather a class. I wanted to have a feeling of familiarity and even closeness among all of them,” Gornostai told Cineuropa. “We had an open call that received more than 800 applications, and looked around Kyiv schools because we realized that a girl with ‘Masha’s traits’ could be shy enough not to apply to casting. Eventually, we made interviews with more than 200 young adults. That’s how we gathered 25 young people and started the nine-week ‘acting laboratory,’ as we called it. It wasn’t a conventional preparation for the film — they didn’t know the script and we didn’t rehearse it there — but we spent that time getting to know each other better and actually falling in love with them all,” she explained.

“Stop-Zemlia” will “start making appearances at U.S. festivals this spring followed by a theatrical release in early 2022,” according to Variety.

Check out a trailer for “Stop-Zemlia” below.