This Is Where I Sleep - Gregory
2013 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Annick De Vries, Ernest Godin, Eza Paventi
Genres: documentary, family
Originally from Wallis and Futuna, Gregory now lives in a converted cabin in New Caledonia, where he plays outdoors with his dogs, climbs trees and heads to the nearby beach.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A five-minute postcard from the South Pacific masquerading as documentary — it's so aggressively gentle that it almost disappears, which is probably the point, but that doesn't make it interesting.
There's a lineage here worth respecting: the observational intimacy of early Kiarostami, the patient rhythms of slow cinema applied to childhood. The three-director collaboration suggests a deliberate, considered approach to what could've been a mere travelogue.
What locks this into place is the decision to let Gregory's environment do the narration — the sound design of trees, dogs, waves — while holding back on voice entirely; that restraint transforms a home video into something with genuine texture and presence.