I learned French in France. French rudeness is overstated. In Paris, in high-stress situations, yeah, they don’t have time to listen to you stumble through a communication that could be completed in a fraction of the time with greater accuracy in English. But outside of Paris, or in more working class neighborhoods, in mom-and-pop shops, you can get all the practice you need. Stay away from Franprix, and go to the corner bodega, and you can strike up a friendly convo.

I also found that French people express appreciation by correcting you. They assume if you’re putting in the effort to learn, you want to know when you make a mistake, and how you should improve. Constant correction can be mildly discouraging to me, but once I learned to take it in the spirit it was delivered, my emotions stopped hindering my communications.

Eurydice BA 2037 by Nikos Nikolaidis is the first film I added to my letterboxd watchlist. And I have not seen it yet. But it set the tone for my watchlist, which is solely a list of films that look interesting to me, that I will definitely forget the titles if I don’t put them somewhere. Anything I’ve heard of before, I leave off the list.