‘Tiny: A Story About Living Small’ Review

Tiny Key Image - Photo by Merete Mueller

Tiny: A Story about Living Small is a documentary about the small house movement. In the film, one of the leading proponents of these mini-dwellings explains that the cap on such a building is probably around 200 square feet. In that spirit, this review will not exceed 200 words.

Directors Merete Mueller and Christopher Smith come to the project through Smith’s own long-held desire to live in such a modest space. The 62-minute film centers upon his bold, naïve plan to complete construction in a single summer. It goes about as well as you’d expect.

For context, Mueller and Smith visit a number of like-minded people across the country. The array of miniature, wheeled domiciles is lovely and quite warmly, if simply, presented. Tiny does not excoriate those of us with bigger homes, but rather presents a vision of a smarter, more compact America.

Tiny’s physical, stylistic vision for representing these wee abodes is, well, a little small. Its spirit, however, goes a long way. Charming is the best word for the film, which joins a personal narrative of finding oneself through labor to a larger community of smart people finding a place for themselves in a too-big world.

Daniel is a freelance critic living in Brooklyn. His writing has appeared at Nonfics, The Film Experience, The Brooklyn Rail, Indiewire, and Dok.Revue.