Little people have been a comedy staple for years. Most humor in the area tends to stem from the disconnect between the psychological desire of bigger people to in some ways infantilize little people, and the reality of their being just like anyone else, only smaller. The theory goes, you show a little person who might involuntarily make the brain’s “cute” receptors fire, and then show them swearing, smoking cigars, or being embarrassingly libidinous, and you’ve struck comedy gold. Their association with circuses and carnivals is longstanding as well, though before circuses realized their comedic potential they were mostly relegated to “freak” status in the sideshow.

In Brazil, though, there’s a circus where not only have the little people made it to the main tent, but they own and run all three rings. The circus is Pindorama, and the owners are a real life set of seven dwarves, sons (and a daughter) of one of the most famous circus dwarves the country ever knew. He fathered a dozen children, and seven of them were tiny in stature as he was. When he died, they took it upon themselves to create the circus he always dreamed of running, which is the subject of the new Brazilian documentary Pindorama—The True Story of the Seven Dwarves, now showing at SILVERDOCS.

Pindorma, the circus, has been a very successful venture, popular throughout the northern Brazilian towns that it travels around. Judging from the audiences shown in the film, it’s no Ringling Bros., but it’s a well loved, smallish regional circus. They’ve got a hook, with dwarves as the focus of the show rather than side characters, and it’s a hook that works. Pindorama the film is not quite as successful.