This Is Where I Sleep - Souad
2013 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Annick De Vries, Ernest Godin, Eza Paventi
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary, family
Tones: contemplative, tender
In a simple mountain home in Morocco with no roads nearby, Souad grows up around the camels her father uses to carry people and goods across the desert-like country.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A tender coming-of-age doc about a girl and camels in Morocco sounds like the kind of thing everyone nods along to—but the film resists the expected arc entirely, which is exactly why it works.
The filmmaking here sits squarely in the observational documentary tradition, with a formal patience that lets intimacy accumulate through presence rather than intervention; the three-director collaboration creates a unified visual quietness that recalls the best of slow cinema.
What elevates this beyond a simple portrait is the decision to let Souad's relationship with the animals anchor everything—the editing trusts silence and proximity over voiceover, and a single moment of her touching a camel's face does more narrative work than most films manage in five minutes.