The Little Deputy is a Canadian short documentary film, directed by Trevor Anderson and starring Luke Oswald, released in 2015.^[1]

This short film blurs documentary and fiction as Anderson re-creates a photograph taken with his father at a West Edmonton Mall photography business while wearing western garb when he was a child in the 1980s. Using the visual tropes of dramatic reenactments seen in documentaries,^[2] the photographer initially mistakes young Anderson (played by Luke Oswald) for a girl and offers him a red dress to wear. He corrects the photographer, worried about the consequences of wearing the dress, and ends up wearing a child-sized deputy costume, which he is shown wearing in the real-life photo that inspired the creation of this film.^[3]

The second act of The Little Deputy manifests Anderson's childhood wish to wear the red gown. Filmed at Fort Edmonton, Anderson lives his childhood fantasy, wearing a red gown created custom for the director/actor, designed by Nicole Bach-Lebrecque^[4] and created by Joanna Johnston,^[5] to re-take the photograph.

The film premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.^[6]

At the Alberta Film and Television Awards in 2015, The Little Deputy won the Rosie Award for Best Short Film.^[7] In December 2015, it was named to the Toronto International Film Festival's annual Canada's Top Ten list of the year's ten best feature and short films.^[8]

The film was a shortlisted Canadian Screen Award nominee for Best Short Documentary Film at the 4th Canadian Screen Awards.^[9]