My favorites are among the many he made as part of two different semi-linked series in the 1980s. They’re funny and stylish, and emotionally often pitch-perfect. Some of my favorites are by Éric Rohmer, a French director who passed away in 2010 and made many films about girls and young women navigating coming of age. When I was younger, I did watch movies more frequently. I did recently watch a season of The Great British Bake-off with my husband, which I loved! I don’t like scary or emotionally-wrenching TV or films. I just don’t have very much free time and there’s always another book I’m eager to finish.

I don’t really watch TV or anything that streams, and don’t listen to podcasts. I’m not sure if this exactly answers the question about hope-but for me it is all wrapped up together, hoping and coping. I was really sensitive, and I still am, but by the time I was a teenager, I had learned coping and numbing mechanisms. And I felt like I was the only person who had these extreme feelings about this stuff (which was not true at all! But sadly I didn’t know others like me at the time). I remember sitting in the hallway with an aide and then being sent to the library until the film was over. I began crying hysterically and had to be taken out of the classroom. It was around the same time Free Willy was shown at my school, and I couldn’t make it past the first scene with the orca being separated from his family. She asked me many questions about why I reacted so intensely to hearing about things like species going extinct, and I remember that we didn’t see eye to eye on any of it-she was really baffled. It was extreme enough that during one of our environmental study units in fourth grade, I was referred to the school psychologist.

Coo by kaela noel