The Tallest Dwarf

The Tallest Dwarf follows filmmaker Julie Forrest Wyman as she searches for her place in the little people community and unpacks rumors of dwarfism in her own family. Through intimate stories, creative collaborations, and archival history, the film delves into identity and medicine, asking whether society should change people or the structures that limit them.

Review from Disability Belongs

It is of utmost importance for people with disabilities to go out into the world, find community with other disabled folks, and make art that tells our own stories – stories that interrogate and dismantle the long-standing tropes that frame us as outsiders and spectacles. The compelling and endearing feature documentary, The Tallest Dwarf, from writer, director, and producer Julie Wyman, does exactly that. The documentary provides an intimate look at Julie’s own journey navigating life as a “Tall dwarf,” and a self-described “in-betweener,” as she shared in an interview with Disability Belongs. In the film, Julie examines how members of the dwarf community immediately recognized her as one of their own, affirming her long-standing internal questions about how she can use the arts as a tool to express herself unapologetically and unabashedly.

The film opens with Julie having a conversation with her parents about growing up as a little person and the disparaging comments she would receive from strangers while out in public with her family. She recalled her parents telling her they never noticed or remembered those kinds of comments and saw her as “normal.” Julie asks, “Did you really think of me as normal?” Starting the film with this conversation is significant because it directly acknowledges the importance of having difficult conversations about disability with our loved ones and examines the way disability is talked about in our homes.

The Tallest Dwarf does a stellar job at showing a community whose members empower one another and are unapologetically themselves. There’s a particularly memorable scene where Julie takes portraits of women with dwarfism, embracing their bodies and showing off their smiles. Throughout the film, Julie and her friends Sofiya Cheyenne, Mark Povinelli, and Aubrey Smalls Taylor, among others, have conversations about how everything in the world is “structured to alienate people who are below 5 feet.” The arts, however, help them to be seen on their own terms. Being seen simply for existing – both individually and in community – rather than being positioned as performers, as has historically occurred in contexts like carnivals, is empowering.

Read the rest of the review from Leandre E. here...