There's plenty of ways to build small container images that don't start with a "full" distribution, but whether they work for specific use cases will depend on what the applications need.
FROM Scratch - starts with a totally blank image, this is the smallest option but your application must work with no supporting files (e.g. statically compiled binaries).
Distroless - has a small number of standard OS support files but no package manager, so works where you don't need to install many OS packages.
Wolfi - Newer than the others, they're building an ecosystem of minimal images for specific purposes.
FROM Scratch - starts with a totally blank image, this is the smallest option but your application must work with no supporting files (e.g. statically compiled binaries).
Distroless - has a small number of standard OS support files but no package manager, so works where you don't need to install many OS packages.
Wolfi - Newer than the others, they're building an ecosystem of minimal images for specific purposes.