Boys of Summer: the teen coming-out romance Summer Storm was hugely popular in Europe; now the film's director and star hope that success continues in this country.

Filmmaker Marco Kreuzpaintner set out to make a coming-out movie that he would want to see when he started writing Summer Storm. "I wanted to make something personal," he explains. "Also I wanted to make a movie that straight people would watch that would help them understand how a young gay man would feel."

The result is a charming, achingly evocative film about 17-year-old Tobi (Robert Stadlober), who is in love with his best friend, Achim. At a summer rowing camp, Achim experiences the first joys of sex with his girlfriend, while Tobi befriends a gay rowing team and copes with the fact that Achim will never return his passions.

For the 28-year-old director, the plan was to infuse the film with emotional honesty so that teenagers would be painted in a sensitive light. "Teen movies have become so stupid," he says. "I wanted this movie to be a movie they understood, one in which the characters looked and acted like them."

The film did well in Germany and hit a nerve with teen audiences, who were also drawn to the casting of Stadlober, a teen idol of sorts from film and stage (he played Renton in the stage version of Trainspotting). "I have fans in Germany, and that was the reason I did it," says Stadlober. "It has helped the film a lot."

It has also meant that Stadlober has been talking openly in interviews about his bisexuality. Although the 23-year-old is currently in a committed relationship with a woman, he says that he has "messed around" with and is "still attracted to guys."

Director Kreuzpaintner, meanwhile, is busy with The Girls Next Door, a hard-hitting English-language drama about sex-slave trafficking produced by blockbuster director Roland Emmerich.