This Is Where I Sleep - Yannick
2013 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Annick De Vries, Ernest Godin, Eza Paventi
Genres: coming-of-age, documentary
Tones: contemplative, whimsical
In Boston, Yannick stores knight costumes and toy swords in his bedroom and stages medieval battles, sometimes on the university campus where his father works.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Most people would've made this a cutesy coming-of-age thing about imagination, but De Vries, Godin, and Paventi just... let Yannick be weird and specific without winking at the camera—that refusal to sentimentalize the strangeness is exactly what makes it work.
A formally restrained portrait that trusts observational documentary to do the heavy lifting; the decision to keep distance rather than psychologize positions this thoughtfully within the tradition of essayistic, character-driven short nonfiction.
The stroke of genius is the sound design—those toy sword clangs and medieval sound effects bleeding into mundane Boston ambient noise—which reframes the entire film as a meditation on how kids construct their own worlds rather than asking us to judge the construction itself.