A boy wants to wear a red dress in a photo with his dad, but doesn’t quite dare

In The Little Deputy, the Canadian director Trevor Anderson revisits a memory from a rare father-son outing in 1986, when a shopping mall photographer at a Wild West-themed photo booth handed him a sparkly red dress. It’s uncertain whether the photographer really mistook the boy for a girl, or instead sensed something about him that no one else quite realised. But, even then, Trevor knew that as an adult he would want to have that picture of himself in the dress. He didn’t dare, though, so years later, he finds a way to fulfill that wish.

Inventive, moving and darkly funny, Anderson’s short film about being gay but not quite out was a festival favourite in 2015, appearing at the Sundance Film Festival and AFI Fest, among many others.