THE TALLEST
DWARF
Directed by Julie Wyman
THE TALLEST DWARF charts filmmaker Julie Wyman’s quest to find her place within the little people (LP) community at a moment when dwarf identity is poised to radically change. As Julie unpacks the rumors of “partial dwarfism” in her family she finds that hers is the last of a body type she has inherited. She joins forces with a group of dwarf artists to confront the legacy of being fetishized and put on display. Together they create films that reclaim a complicated history and speak back to the echoes of eugenics in the newly emerging pharmaceutical interventions that make little people taller. Through its personal and expanding perspective, the film invites audiences to a new way of seeing.
A When Fancy Farms Production
Executive Produced by Multitude Films
2025 / 92 minutes
About
the Team
Julie Wyman — Director, Writer & Producer
Julie’s creative documentary work engages issues of embodiment, body image, and the possibilities and problematics of media spectatorship - all informed by her experience of living with hypochondroplasia dwarfism. Her 2012 documentary STRONG! premiered at AFI Silverdocs and was broadcast nationally on PBS’s Emmy award winning series, Independent Lens, where it won the series’ Audience Award. Wyman’s work has been awarded support from Sundance, Sandbox, IDA, SF Film Society, Points North, ITVS, the Creative Capital Foundation, The Princess Grace Foundation, California Humanities and NEH. She has been a fellow at the UC Davis Feminist Research Institute and a resident SF Film Society’s Filmhouse, Siena Art Institute, Logan Nonfiction and Points North. Her films, including FATMOB (2016), BUOYANT (2005), and A BOY NAMED SUE (2000), have aired on Showtime, MTV’s LOGO-TV, and have been exhibited on five continents. She serves as Associate Professor of Cinema and Digital Media at UC Davis.
Lindsey Dryden — Producer
Lindsey is an Emmy® award-winning film producer and director based in Austin TX and the UK. She produced Sundance Special Jury Award-winning UNREST (2017, PBS/Netflix), produced Emmy®-winning TRANS IN AMERICA (2018, ACLU/CondeNast them) and executive produced AHEAD OF THE CURVE (2020, Starz) and BIFA-nominated narrative short THE FORGOTTEN C (2020). She directed LOST AND SOUND (2012, SXSW), JACKIE KAY: ONE PERSON, TWO NAMES (2017, Tate Queer British Art), and CLOSE YOUR EYES AND LOOK AT ME (2009, True/False). She is a co-founder of FWD-Doc: Filmmakers with Disabilities, a proud member of QueerDoc, a 2022 Sundance Institute Documentary Producers Lab Fellow, a BFI Vision Awardee 2020, a former Filmmaker-In-Residence at Jacob Burns Film Center and a full voting member of the film and TV chapter of BAFTA. She founded Little By Little Films, which specializes in brilliant storytelling by LGBTQ+, women’s and D/deaf and disabled voices.
Jonna McKone — Producer
Jonna is a filmmaker, producer and artist based in Baltimore, MD. She works with documentary, narrative, archives and abstraction to explore connections between landscapes, the body, and memory. She produced ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival where it won a Special Jury Award for Nonfiction Experimentation and MARGIE SOUDEK’S SALT AND PEPPER SHAKERS (Sundance 2023). ALL LIGHT, EVERYWHERE is distributed by Super, LTD and broadcast on Hulu. The film was named a best film of 2021 by Artforum, Esquire and The New Yorker. Alongside filmmaking, Jonna is an artist who has shown her work in galleries and museums and has received support from the Rubys Artist Grant, Skidmore’s Storytellers’ Institute, The Andy Warhol Foundation’s Grit Fund, the Baker Artist Awards, the Puffin Foundation, Maryland State Arts Council, and the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has been a Points North American Stories Fellow, a Center for Documentary Studies Lewis Hine Fellow, a VisArts Studio Fellow, and Photography Resident Artist at Monson Arts.
Shaleece Haas — Producer
Shaleece is an Emmy Award-winning documentary producer and director based in Los Angeles. Producing credits include DELIKADO (2022; Hot Docs, POV); ASIAN AMERICANS: BREAKING THROUGH (2020; PBS, Peabody Award); and TEXAS STRONG (2018; SXSW, Emmy Award). Directing credits include REAL BOY (2017; PBS/Independent Lens), which won 20 festival awards; and the animated short TO THE FUTURE, WITH LOVE (2021; POV Shorts). Shaleece is also a certified somatic practitioner and a film supervisor at Film in Mind, which provides therapeutic support for the film industry.
Debra Schaffner — Editor & Writer
Debra is a filmmaker who weaves reality, memory and imagined worlds to reveal deeper, stranger truths beyond the confines of traditional storytelling. Raised by robots in the suburbs of New Jersey, she eventually made her way west where she worked as a bike messenger, carpenter, and sound designer before finding her voice as a filmmaker and video editor. Editor credits include FREE FOR ALL: The Public Library (INDEPENDENT LENS, 2025) and CELEBRITY EXPLORERS (2018) which was awarded Best Series by the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival (2018). Her work has aired on PBS, Cartoon Network and screened at FRAMELINE and DOCS/MX. Debra is currently directing her first feature, CURSE OF THE MUTANT HEIRLOOM, a hybrid documentary supported by BAVC MediaMaker, SFFILM, Jewish Film Institute, Jewish Story Partners, California Humanities, and the Berkeley Film Foundation.
Composer
The Octopus Project
Consulting Producer
Helen Hood Scheer
Supervising Producer
Michael Ehrenzweig
Cinematographers
Gabriella Garcia-Pardo
Jilann Spitzmiller
Debra Schaffner
Anne Etheridge
Tijana Petrovic
Executive Producers
Sofiya Cheyenne
Nic Novicki
Jess Devaney
Anya Rous
Carrie Lozano
Lois Vossen
Consulting Editor
Maya Daisy Hawke
Additional Consulting Editors
Todd Chandler
Nels Bangerter
Co-Producers
Loi Ameera Almeron
Colleen Cassingham
Debra Schaffner
