just Igor Clémentine

18 Giugno 2026 - 8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)

10 Apr 2026 - Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai, 1994)

I wait to see if my name deserves an answer or just another day of waiting. There’s nothing here, only my time that I give away. It is simply asked, because it’s clear that I keep it in store even when I pretend I don’t. I wake up and already calculate how much space to take up not to be a burden, how many minutes to wait to be remembered.

19 Dec 2025 - C'eravamo tanto amati (We All Loved Each Other So Much - Ettore Scola, 1974)

You ask how I am, as if the answer could be simple.

You ask about my home, as if you never heard me crying all night on the balcony, shaking from the cold and the hurt. As you didn't stayed in your bed and slept through it, like my hurt was nothing.

You ask about my christmas plans, as if you never forgot to buy my presents, the empty days that were supposed to be celebrations.

You ask about my friends, as if I never ran away to their homes, just to see if you would notice I was gone.

You ask so easily, as if you never knelt on the train platform, crying and begging for a different ending, after so many nights you let the endings happen.

Now you ask me with this easy care, but I can hear the real question beneath your words: you want to know if the door is still open.

Months have passed. I have packed that life away, box by heavy box. My new home is not a place that waits for you.

24 August 2025, Robot Dreams (Pablo Berger, 2023)

I woke in the tent, with the ghost of a weight on my shoulder. I had pulled it from its dark corner in the cellar, and ended up sleeping inside it on the terrace floor.

Six years ago, it was our sanctuary. The beach and the woods, the only places we could be.

Falling asleep in its familiar mustiness, I thought of you, of the great divide you represent: the end of the chaotic country of youth, the stark and sobering climb into being a man.

The dream came. Not with the good times or the painful end, but with the night a year later: us, sitting on the sidewalk, talking for hours about wasted opportunities. Twenty years old, but already wise enough to recognize the tragedy of timing.

But the dream altered the memory. We were older there, and instead of the awkward, final hug, I simply rested my head on your shoulder, and you held me. It was not a lover’s embrace, but something purer: a silent apology offered to our younger selves.

Waking was a violence.

I cried for us. For the desperate, unequipped love we had. For the kids who believed a flimsy tent was a palace, thay they were protecting themselves from the rain and the eyes.

11 June 2025, Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)

I’m haunted by this fear that if I ever fixed this thing the nagging pain, the glitch in my system then I’d be left staring into the abyss of everything else I’ve been avoiding.

There’s a part of me that wants the wound, and clings to the hurt like a life raft. If nothing’s broken, what’s my excuse? If I’m not a little ruined, then I have to face the truth: the real emptiness is not the pain, it's the silence after.

Sometimes I catch myself cheating, it’s easier to nurse this wounds than to admit I’m terrified of being whole. This mess is my alibi, my reason to stay small, to never risk the unbearable lightness of actually healing.

17 April 2025, Punch Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002)

He once told me no one would ever love me more than he did. Now I wonder if that's true, if the deepest love I'll ever know in my life came from someone who no longer notices I'm fading.

23 March 2025 - In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)

I think that, deep down, he was scared. Not just of commitment, but of me, of my sadness. He never said it, but I could feel it. So he kept me close, but he never let me in. Close enough to feel, but never enough to fall with me.

I let it happen.

03 March 2025 - Hit the road (Panah Panahi, 2021)

This film made me think of my parents.

There are things one comes to understandswith time, like certain drawings that, seen up close, are chaotic, but then, stepping back, reveal a precise shape. And now, with a steadier step, I can finally see: the two of them together, their silent tenderness, their love for me turned into a fairy tale without fear.

I recalled the nights in the camper, the sky stretching endlessly above us. It was only another adventure. I believed we were wanderers without a real destination, free, happy to wake up in a different parking lot every morning. I didn’t know that travels have not been chosen, that under that tin roof, they carried the weight of a thousand unsaid thoughts.

And then, another departure. The arrival in a country I did not know, where every word felt like an enigma to decipher. And there, the grandmother I had never met gave me a precious gift, teaching me that delicate language as she led me through the halls of museums.

Only now do I see the hidden sorrow in their eyes as we left our home, the city we knew, the friends we would never see again. When everything seemed to fall apart, they found a way to make me believe we were flying. They never let me feel the cold of winter nights, the sound of a lump in their throat as they measured every cost, the exhaustion in their steps. I didn’t know there were missed calls, doors shut in their faces, fears that made their hands tremble, cause we sang Battisti at the top of our lungs, laughing and dancing together.

I don’t know if I will ever be able to repay them for all of this. I can only feel grateful, for having been so well protected that I never realized how fragile our balance truly was.

04 Jan 2025 - Memoir of a Snail (Adam Elliot, 2024)

The first night was New Year's Eve. I barely remember it now, just fragments slipping through the cracks of my skull. Faces blurred in half-light, voices blending into a single roar. R shoved a drink into my hand, M passed me a joint, that's how it started.

Fresh year, clean slate. But I wasn't celebrating anything, I was just erasing. Drowning the weight of a year I barely survived beneath an ocean of smoke and alcohol.

When I woke up, I wasn't in my bed, not even on a couch. I opened my eyes to someone's floor. It was sticky, cold, littered with cigarette ash and empty beer bottles. My head felt like it had been split open, my body hollowed out, I couldn't even tell whether it was still night or if the new year had already spilled into the morning.

The second night, the hangover hadn't hit. I wouldn't let it and I kept drinking. My friends stuck around for a while, making sure the vibe stayed light. They told me "This is what you need", and I believed them. I did it until they were gone, until I looked around and realized they left, slipping away like I wasn't paying attention.

I spent the third night at home alone. Still high, still drunk.

I understand why they left. Really, I do. But I can't help feeling the anger and the hurt. They left me alone in the haze they helped create, drifting in the wreckage of their good intentions.

I stop drinking, I know better. This is not the first time. The quiet isn't something I can drown. It's a tide, rising and falling, waiting for the moment I stop fighting so it can pull me under.

29 Dec 2024 - Like Grains of Sand (Ryosuke Hashiguchi, 1995)

Most days, I see him in me, the man I've spent years trying to leave behind. His voice creeps into my own, his habits ghost my movements, his anger flickers behind my eyes. I can see him in the way I snap at someone I love, in the way I flinch at kindness as if it's just a trick, or even when I hold my silence when I should speak.

I hate it. I hate the parts of me that remind me of him. It's as if he carved himself into my bones, left his fingerprints on the way I breathe.

21 Dec 2024 - Melancholia, Lars von Trier (2011)

The last two days have blurred into one long, heavy stretch of time. I’ve wanted nothing more than to stay in bed, letting the hours slip past me unnoticed. But life doesn’t wait. My alarm is set for 6, even though I don’t have to be up until 7. I need that extra hour, to talk myself into moving.

Getting ready feels like going through motions someone else set for me: eat something, brush my teeth, shave, pull on clothes that fit the day’s expectations. Everyone on the street can tell I’ve been crying. I catch glimpses of my reflection in passing windows: tired, crumpled, and entirely unconvincing.

Work comes next, followed by the chaotic gauntlet of Christmas shopping. The stores are unbearable, crowded and noisy, so I had to slither like an eel into quieter aisles with no real plan, hoping to stumble on something, anything, that might pass for a decent gift.

Tonight, I was supposed to have dinner with some friends. I threw on some clothes without thinking and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My reflection stared back, worn and hollow. I tried to summon the energy to smile, but it wasn’t there. Not tonight.

I called M. After two rings, I hung up, unable to trust my voice. Instead, I sent a quick message, hoping he’d understand without needing an explanation.

Then I let the bed take me back.

18 Dec 2024 - By This River, Brian Eno (Before and After Science, 1977)

"Waiting here, always failing to remember why we came."

I remember sitting across from you at the kitchen table, the silence between us heavy, like a fog that had settled over everything. You held your coffee cup with both hands, not for warmth - by then there was none left between us. It was something to hold onto, like the routines we clung to even as everything else crumbled.

We both knew.

The truth had hung between us like a ghost, always there but never spoken aloud. I used to think it would have been kinder to say it, to finally cut the thread that kept us tethered. But neither of us did. I wondered then if you were waiting for me, or if you were just as afraid as I was to be the one to let go.

I knew, even then, that it had to end. I knew that staying was slowly unraveling us both. But walking away, turning you into a memory I couldn’t control, felt impossible.

So I stayed. And you stayed too. Not out of love, but because the alternative terrified us both. We sat there, day after day, waiting for something to give. Waiting for the string to snap, for the dam to break, for one of us to find the courage to leave.

17 Dec 2024 - After Life, Hirokazu Kore-eda (1998)

I searched within myself, hoping to unearth fragments of happiness. I pulled open drawers and broke down doors, but all I found were vague echoes that spoke in whispers. My own joy was a house whose lights had been out for years.

And yet, I discovered something I hadn’t expected: I was the light in someone else’s house. The warmth I had forgotten how to hold had passed, unseen, from my hands into theirs.

And in that quiet knowing, my sadness softened.

Maybe I was never meant to carry my own happiness, but to scatter it, like pollen on a spring wind, into lives where it could take root and bloom.

16 Dec 2024 - Amour, Michael Haneke (2012)

15 Dec 2024 - Happy Together, Wong Kar-wai (1997)

As a child, I was full of chatter, brimming with enthusiasm for everything that lit a spark in me. But the more I shared, the more I was met with ridicule, so I learned to quiet myself.

By fourteen, my pleas for attention were met with silence, just because it was easier for everyone else. So I began holding my secrets close, careful not to trouble anyone around me.

At twenty, I opened up for the first time, speaking of my deepest wounds to the person I trusted most. His discomfort was like a slammed door, forcing me to lock everything away again. I convinced myself I could simply leave my pain behind, pretend it wasn’t there.

At twenty-five, a new partner offered me the kind of space and support I’d never known before, a place where I could finally unpack what I’d been carrying. But by then, it felt like there was nothing left inside to give. Words would well up from deep within, swelling to my throat, pressing to be released. No sound came out.

It's like standing on the edge of a song, the melody just out of reach. Someone asks you to sing, but no lyrics come to you, no tune stick.