Potato Dreams of America

Director: Wes Hurley
Cast: Jonathan Bennett, Lea Delaria, Lauren Tewes
USA, 2022, HD, color, 97’

Russian-US director Wes Hurley's autobiographical comedy Potato Dreams of America deals with the adventure of a teenage queer living in Soviet Russia who dreams of America and starts a new life in the United States with his mother. The first half of the film, set in Vladivostok, one of the port cities of Russia neighboring Japan, portraits the daily life of Potato who is still a child in the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev era, his attempts to get to know himself, and his social ties through an absurd American sitcom aesthetic. In the second part of the film, we watch the new life of Potato and his mother, who could not see a future for themselves in the Soviet Union, in Seattle, where they moved after hardships, through a melodramatic and more autobiographical narrative. Bringing the dualities of the 20th century into our eyes, Wes Hurley tells his own life story by using dark humor successfully.