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Seattle filmmaker and Wes that is performer Hurley a hit in the SXSW Film Festival with a film memoir of growing up gay in Russia, “minimal Potato.”

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Once they called their title, if they stated he had won, Wes Hurley couldn’t go. He simply stared.

For the reason that minute, he had been yet again the tiny child — the “little potato,” as their mother called him — viewing a movie from the television. Transfixed. Frozen. Disbelieving.

And today, here he had been, winning the Grand Jury Award for Documentary Short for their film, “Little Potato,” last week during the Southern By Southwest movie Festival.

“I happened to be totally surprised,” Hurley said last week, chatting from a motor vehicle home that is traveling Seattle through Texas. (He’s scared of flying.)

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“I happened to be taking a look at my partner like, ‘What’s going on?’ and I also got on stage and I also don’t keep in mind what I stated anymore,” he proceeded. “And we called my mother and I also began crying.”

Needless to say he did. That they had come thus far.

“Little Potato” informs the storyline of Hurley’s very early life in Russia. Just how he understood he had been homosexual at an early age. Just exactly How he escaped the turbulence of Perestroika — and his or her own emotions of isolation and confusion — by viewing pirated films that are american. And exactly how their mom, Elena Bridges, became a bride that is mail-order arrive at America and save your self them both.

When right right here, their everyday lives took more interested twists (we won’t inform you the closing), until they both discovered delight, together as well as on their very own.

“We made a film about how precisely films change our life,” Hurley said, “It’s a strange group.”

Hurley, 35, stumbled on America in 1997, as he had been 16. He learned arts and drama during the University of Washington and continued to publish and direct the gay-themed internet show, “Capitol Hill.”