This Is Where I Sleep - Tobia
2013 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Annick De Vries, Ernest Godin, Eza Paventi
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary, family
In Switzerland, energetic Tobia plays soccer with friends at every chance and designs houses in a computer game, hoping to become an architect.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a competent doc about a kid who likes soccer and video games—exactly the kind of well-meaning, consensus-safe portrait that puts me to sleep. Where's the wrinkle, the thing that makes you *uncomfortable*?
A formally assured observational portrait that sits comfortably in the NFB's lineage of intimate youth documentation, with the kind of patient framing and tonal restraint that rewards close attention.
The genius move here is letting Tobia's two worlds—physical play and digital architecture—speak in their own visual languages without commentary, trusting the cut between them to do the thematic work that other films would've explained to death.