Outfest was — as always — an unparalleled mix of queer voices, but three films stood out to me among those I was able to catch.

(Images via Outfest)

Potato Dreams of America

My favorite viewing experience was Potato Dreams of America, written and directed by Wes Hurley (fresh from his distinguished 2006 work in the film Boy Culture as Broadway Hot Guy #2!), and based on the true and truly incredible story of the flight from Russia undertaken by him and his mother amid Glasnost — thanks to her willingness to be a mail-order bride.

In this quirky coming-of-age tale, which won Best Screenplay at Outfest, little Potato (achingly affecting Hersh Powers in Russia, Tyler Bocock in America) is entranced by what cheesy-TV glimpses his family gets of the United States, a land with such wonders as soap and steady access to electricity.

Already realizing he is gay, Potato helps his mom (Sera Barbieri in Russia, Marya Sea Kaminski in America) make herself appealing to John (Dan Lauria), an American man seeking a Russian bride in the mail. What could possibly go wrong? Maybe they should have listened a little bit more to Grandma (Lea DeLaria, who you will see in a whole new light); though she is punishingly negative, she isn't always incorrect in her no-B.S. assessments of reality.

Once in America, Potato, is now embodied as a teenager by Bocock, who renders the character as a product of normal adolescent angst compounded by the panic any gay teen felt — feels — prior to coming out, even in the rapidly changing '90s. Bocock ably anchors the film with a thin veneer of stoicism that clearly shields warmth and curiosity. Kaminski — whose performance seamlessly transitions from Barbieri's — consistently reveals a mother whose reactions to various potential disasters are always refreshingly unexpected. Potato's coming-out to his mother is one of the most beautifully real, nonstereotypical and deeply felt I've seen committed to film, carrying all the impact of one of those hidden-camera YouTube videos that captures a parent's sweetly supportive response and a child's giddy relief.

Potato Dreams of America's greatest gift is its creator's bravery, both in telling an intimate, difficult family story and in choosing to tell it in a way that at times has a high-school play surrealism. Hurley is engaging in high-stakes gambling, but it pays off in the form of a film that demands your attention and mostly succeeds in all it attempts; my only quibble is that a major twist is probably necessarily handled a bit too neatly in order to impart the drama it must have carried in real life. Still, we do stan a happy ending.

Along with its other strengths, Potato Dreams of America offers Jonathan Bennett in a hilarious bit as a chill Jesus Christ (how perfect that a gay kid would dream up a savior with eyebrows to die for) and Lauren Tewes as a Russian Mrs. Kravitz.

This film is funny, heartfelt, earnest and edgy, exactly the type of project you'd hope to discover at Outfest.

Firstness

U.S. Narrative Feature Grand Jury prize winner Firstness is a remarkably provocative film, both in story and tone. Writer-director Brielle Brilliant's feature stars Tim Kinsella as a harried father raising a nonbinary kid (Spencer Jording) who is becoming uncomfortably close to a stranger, adult ex-con (Caleb Cabrera).

Exquisitely shot almost as a series of spare but visually interesting View Master-esque images in which the figures talk, the film is aggressively artful, and the dialogue verges at times on the nonsensical, or at least on the entirely unpredictable. It has a stilted quality, one that fits the awkwardness of the situation — a father who feels unable to parent while trying to heal himself via an experimental therapy group known as Infinite Beginnings, a child innocently courting a friendship with an adult, a frustrated man looking for work who is oddly attracted to the child's energy.

We are meant to freak out when things like this happen, but this film makes us think about the freak-out more than actually doing it.

The acting lives up to the experiment, with the performers fully committed to Brilliant's sense of detachment from norms. One look at the movie's official site will prepare you for its unflinching urge to look, to stare even, more than to listen. In that regard, Firstness strikes me as being a meditation on the nearly hopeless imperfection of oral communication.

As esoteric as it could come across to some, even comically so, I could not stop thinking about it, and I felt the Outfest honor was richly deserved.

The Sixth Reel

It certainly isn't in black-and-white, but The Sixth Reel — written and directed by Carl Andress and Charles Busch, who also stars — has a vintage look that suits its subject matter to a T. The visuals actually reminded me of Apartment Zero (minus the murder), as did its focus on the world of movie buffs.

An old-fashioned caper that was filmed in the throes of COVID, The Sixth Reel is about a legendarily lost movie, part of which has been found in a dead collector's apartment by his surviving sometime paramour Jimmy, played by a delightfully deflated Busch, and his only living relative, a histrionic resident of Florida who blows into town like a hurricane to dispose of his worldly goods. She doesn't know from rare celluloid, but softens up when Busch's character tells her they could make millions by selling it to the right, and the greediest, party.

Hampered by nostalgia vampires played by Margaret Cho, Doug Plaut, Heather MacRae, Dee Hoty, Richard Bekins and André De Shields, the two must figure out how to sell the movie to single-minded (well, until he gets a load of Busch in drag) collector Mr. Beltrane (Patrick Page) before it's stolen, as Jimmy's nemesis Michael (a dashing Tim Daly) wants to do in order to preserve the film in a museum.

Complicating matters are a couple (Cady Huffman and John Ellison Conlee) who keep turning up just when Jimmy least wants to see them.

The Sixth Reel was a pleasure for me, a throwback to the It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World mentality, albeit one that trods familiar terrain. What elevates it is the interplay between apoplectic Halston and sardonic Busch, the emergence of Busch's flame-haired drag persona and the fact that the film presumes its audience knows who the fuck Norma Shearer was. Recommended, if you do.