French Lesson

Alina is in Kyiv, taking a French lesson online. Outside the sirens are sounding, and she keeps conjugating. On the other side of the screen, in Paris, her teacher checks the time and would rather end the call and go to dinner. As the lesson unfolds, their conversation becomes more than an exercise in vocabulary: for her it is a fragile refuge and a way to stay connected to another person, for him an encounter that quietly unsettles the comfort of his everyday life.