This Is Where I Sleep - Pipo
2013 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Annick De Vries, Ernest Godin, Eza Paventi
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary
Tones: contemplative, tender
In Jacmel, Haiti, Pipo rides his bicycle through streets where neighbours are rebuilding after the earthquake, fortunate that his own family home was not damaged.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A post-earthquake Haiti film that could've been trauma porn or NGO messaging, but instead just... follows a kid on a bike—which is almost subversive in its refusal to perform tragedy for the camera.
Three directors working in documentary's quietly observational tradition, letting the frame do the work of situating Pipo within community recovery without commentary or score—formally restrained in the best sense.
The entire film turns on choosing to stay with Pipo's ordinary bicycle ride through extraordinary circumstances; that single decision to trust small, domestic movement over spectacle is what makes the devastation around him actually land.