This Is Where I Sleep - Monir & Abdérémane
2013 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Annick De Vries, Ernest Godin, Eza Paventi
Genres: documentary, family
On Anjouan in the Comoros, Monir and Abdérémane live in a densely packed neighbourhood and fill their days with video games, motorbikes, soccer and playing with neighbouring children.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a five-minute doc about kids playing video games and soccer in the Comoros—sounds like a postcard, feels like anthropology without the lecture, which is exactly the subversive move most filmmakers would botch.
The formal restraint here—observational, unsentimental, letting the texture of daily life accumulate without a narrator's hand—sits squarely in the lineage of essayistic documentary portraiture that rewards close viewing.
The choice to let the hum of the neighborhood, the rhythm of play, and the specific gravity of these two kids' world breathe without score or intervention is what transforms a slice-of-life into something that feels essential—every frame earns its weight through subtraction.