This Is Where I Sleep - William
2013 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Annick De Vries, Ernest Godin, Eza Paventi
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary, sports
Tones: contemplative, tender
A francophone boy near Regina, William lives surrounded by a mostly English-speaking region while devoting himself to basketball, hockey and trading player cards with friends.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A kid playing hockey in Saskatchewan isn't exactly a premise that makes you lean forward—it's the *opposite* of subversive, which is probably why it works so well as a quiet portrait of linguistic isolation that refuses to make a meal of its own melancholy.
Three directors working in lockstep on a five-minute documentary speaks to a deliberate formal approach; the restraint here sits comfortably in the lineage of essayistic NFB portraiture, though the tension between image and cultural specificity deserves more analytical weight than the film gives it.
The decision to let William's bilingual life *live* in the frame—neither centered nor explained, just present—is the hinge that makes this work; it's a small film that trusts you to notice what matters without narration or score doing the emotional labor.