My Tribe Is My Life - Laurianne, Goth in the Gaspé
2011 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Myriam Verreault
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
Laurianne embraces goth dress and identity in the Gaspé, knowing her appearance shocks neighbours while finding belonging among fellow goths online.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A five-minute doc about a goth kid in rural Quebec should be the most predictable coming-of-age check-box imaginable, but Verreault refuses the easy narrative—there's no redemption arc, no town-versus-self showdown, just the quiet radical act of someone choosing their tribe and staying put.
Verreault's restraint here is formally decisive: the film knows its lineage in intimate documentary portraiture and resists the sentimentality that genre typically demands, letting the Gaspé landscape and Laurianne's self-possession do the philosophical work.
The film's entire architecture turns on a single choice—letting Laurianne's online community exist as voiceover and presence rather than spectacle—which transforms what could've been a touristic portrait into something about actual belonging and connection across distance.