This Is Where I Sleep - Myriam
2013 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Annick De Vries, Ernest Godin, Eza Paventi
Genres: documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
In Acadia, New Brunswick, Myriam lives in a house by the sea as a descendant of early French settlers, passionate about fashion design and devoted to her dog Ti-Lou.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A five-minute doc about a woman who designs clothes and loves her dog in rural Acadia—sounds like NPR filler, but the film resists the obvious heartland-nostalgia trap by actually staying curious about Myriam instead of performing sentimentality at her.
The film situates itself carefully within the documentary tradition of intimate portraiture, privileging compositional restraint and observational patience—a lineage stretching back through cinema-vérité, executed here with formal discipline despite its modest scale.
The decision to let the sea-light and Myriam's hands (moving through fabric, through her dog's fur) do the emotional work instead of relying on voice-over or scored uplift—that's the move that transforms a character study into something that actually breathes.