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If the film has a "message", it's that we and the society we have constructed for ourselves – with oppressive and institutionalised violence, rules and regulations – are monstrous, not the dwarfs. - Werner Herzog

The inmates of an island institution rebel against the guards and administration that have oppressed them. However, the complete freedom offered by their revolt only reveals the extremes of which they are capable without restriction.

Herzog's controversial second feature film Even Dwarfs Started Small has the surreal qualities of a nightmare. The film is largely plotless, instead revelling in the comic anarchic mood conjured by the activities of the film's cast of people with dwarfism as they test the bounds of their freedom with hijinks, vandalism and, ultimately, violence.

M | Mature themes