This Is Where I Sleep - Luan
2013 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Annick De Vries, Ernest Godin, Eza Paventi
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary, musical
Tones: contemplative, tender
In Montreal, Luan grows up in a musical home where her father is a musician and the garage is a studio, as she sings, learns several instruments and performs on stage.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A Montreal kid grows up musical, dad's a musician, garage becomes a studio—sounds like every indie music doc ever made, and it basically is. Pass.
The lineage here is solid (NFB pedigree, thoughtful coming-of-age structure), but the film exists comfortably within well-established documentary tradition rather than interrogating or expanding it.
Three directors orchestrate a five-minute portrait where the real lift comes from letting Luan's own voice—literal and metaphorical—anchor the frame; that restraint, that trust in the subject over narration, is what transforms a simple family story into something that breathes.