From Russia, with love for Hollywood – a family’s unusual path to an American dream

The filmmaker Wes Hurley was born Vasili Naumenko in Vladivostok in the USSR, and affectionately called Little Potato by his mother Elena. His was a childhood of trauma and uncertainty: his father was violent; his emerging sexuality was forbidden; and his country was cracking apart in a convulsive process of change. But a love of early 1990s Hollywood movies led him and his mother on a long and bumpy path to happiness in the US. In Little Potato, co-directed with the US filmmaker Nathan M Miller, Hurley chronicles this journey with gentle humour and moving candour. This standout autobiography was a festival favourite in 2017, taking home honours at the SXSW and Sarasota film festivals, among others.