This Is Where I Sleep - Djoany
2013 · 50m · Canada
Directed by Annick De Vries, Ernest Godin, Eza Paventi
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary
Kanak student Djoany boards at college during the week in New Caledonia, then returns home to spend her days outdoors building huts in the forest and swinging into the river.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
This is exactly the kind of film that looks like a gentle coming-of-age doc on the surface but actually interrogates what 'home' means across colonial divides—the real subversion is in the editing's refusal to sentimentalize either world, leaving the tension uncomfortably alive.
The film's formal restraint—favoring observation over voiceover, letting the rhythm of Djoany's dual life unfold through montage—places it in a lineage of essayistic documentary that trusts the viewer to feel the contradiction between her two selves without spelling it out.
The decision to let the camera simply *stay* with Djoany during the quiet hours in the forest—no music, no narrative push—transforms what could've been a standard intercutting structure into something that actually feels like memory and embodiment, where the river swings become as vital as the classroom.