Isabel Darling’s The Carnival reminded me of a particular ilk of great Australian documentary storytelling, like Maya Newell’s Gayby Baby (2015) and In My Blood it Runs (2019) and Justine Moyle’s Tall Poppy (2021). The storytellers find a subject or a family who seem absolutely ordinary and build a rapport that allows them to tell the story of how they are extraordinary.

The Bell family have been touring carnival sideshow attractions for nearly 100 years. It’s a life on the road from their Queanbeyan base as they circumnavigate Australia every year.

At the start of Darling’s connection with them, the garrulous mullet haired Elwin Bell runs the show with his father as the silent but intractable patriarch. Elwin’s son, 15 year-old Roy, is the next in line – there are daughters, but there is never a doubt about who is in charge. Wife Selina and daughter Elle run the food stands and the games, manage the books but never the rides. Selina, a born and bred ‘showie’, doesn’t get much credit from Elwin but she is the powerhouse who keeps it all running.

When Darling began filming, she thought the dramatic arc would be Roy rejecting a future in the business, but he takes to it, eventually, being given his own ride to transport, set up, run, and pack up. We follow them over seven years, through heartbreak – daughter Elle despairs at ever finding a relationship – expected and unexpected babies and the disasters of the 2019 fires, COVID and floods that stopped them in their tracks. Stranded in Bateman’s Bay during the fires, they serve carnival food into the night to families who have lost their homes. They pull through it all though, their sense of family and community is strong and their investment is huge.

Darling allows us to observe without judgement and we see the patterns of family obligation and the search for independence repeated through the generations as well as the irresistible pull of life on the road. It is such an amazing and tough life that you can’t help but admire them for an ethic that doesn’t seem to exist much elsewhere.

A bonus for me was an audience full of showies at the screening who were quick to spill the tea in an after film Q&A.

SPOILERS: Elle’s Leroy is a showie and Elwin didn’t make good on his promise to take Selina out more.

Director: Isabel Darling
Origin: Australia (2023)
Language: English
Genre: Documentary

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