Here We Have Idaho
2020 · 10m · USA
Directed by Matt Barats
Genres: comedy, documentary
Tones: contemplative, humorous, melancholic
A New York City comedian returns home to Idaho and ends up sleeping in a trailer in the driveway, narrating the small humiliations of being undervalued by your own family. It's a self-portrait built out of memory scraps and low-grade resentment.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
The 'going home and feeling small' film is a tired genre — Barats saves it by sleeping in the damn trailer and letting the camera catch him being petty. Specificity over sentiment; I'll take it.
Family members credited as Ma, Pa, Brother 1, Brother 2 — that flattening turns home-movie footage into anthropology of his own bloodline. Ross McElwee confessional cam on a Caleb-Landry-Jones character. Specific.
Family members credited as Ma, Pa, Brother 1, Brother 2 — a deliberate flattening that makes home-movie footage feel like an anthropological study of his own bloodline. That credit choice IS the formal argument. Page blocked but Barats's voice is reliable.