The remote control is the least cinematic object in my living room. A small black rectangle, too light, whose most used buttons have turned white like pebbles. However, it is she who decides, every evening, whether my day ends in silence, in music, in images, or in this half-sleep where we confuse the credits with our own thoughts.
These last few days, I find it more often between my fingers, not out of boredom, but out of a form of waiting. It is March 3, 2026, and in less than two weeks—March 15—the great American ceremony will return to impose itself in conversations, articles, algorithms, morning coffees. I've always had a strange relationship with this appointment: I only half believe in it, I criticize it easily, and I still end up watching it. As if, beyond the prices, I was looking for a collective moment: proof that, despite our fragmented lives, we are still capable of fixing our attention on the same scene at the same moment.
What has changed is not so much the cinema as the way in which it invites itself into my kitchen, into my fatigue, into my laundry to be folded. Before, we went “to the cinema” like we went somewhere—with a departure, a route, a place, a time. Today, the cinema comes to sit next to the sink while the water heats. It slips into gaps. He accepts being interrupted by a notification, by a neighbor breaking in, by a pan boiling over. And this ease has a price: images become more available, and therefore more fragile. I sometimes find myself treating a film as simple background music, as if the shots were animated wallpaper.
So I impose on myself tiny, almost ridiculous rituals to restore weight to the images. The first: turn off the living room light, even if I'm not in a room. The second: put my phone face down on the table, like a pet being silenced. The third: don't “zap” when the story hesitates. I've noticed that our lives are like these slow passages that we skip: a lackluster conversation, an aimless walk, an evening without an event. However, this is where the texture of the days is created. It’s the scenes we don’t tell that make us up.
Last week, I rewatched an old film in an unexpected way: not by choosing it, precisely, but by stumbling upon it. A channel had programmed it, and I let myself be caught by the simple obviousness of a schedule. There was something relaxing about not deciding. Television, which is often accused of being a mind-numbing machine, offered me a form of peace that evening: that of gentle constraint. At 9 p.m. the film starts; at 10:40 p.m. it ends; and between the two, I just have to stay. I remembered that the cinema, ultimately, is not just a giant screen: it is a temporal pact. We accept being held.
At the same time, discussions around prices and selections are resuming. Last year at Cannes, a film by Jafar Panahi won the Palme d'Or, and I thought about how certain stories continue to exist even when we make their lives difficult. This spring, the Cannes Film Festival will take place from May 12 to 23, 2026, with Park Chan-wook as jury president. You just have to read these names to feel that cinema is not just entertainment: it is also a way of looking at the world with a precision that is sometimes painful, sometimes exhilarating—but rarely neutral.
And then there is this other announcement that struck me, not for its glamor, but for its philosophy: on the Oscars side, a new award dedicated to casting is appearing, and there is also talk of stricter rules to ensure that voters have actually seen the films. These are administrative details, almost dull. Yet they say something about our times: we are saturated with instant opinions, pre-viewing verdicts, “I heard that…”. Rewarding casting is a reminder that cinema is an art of human choice—not just a matter of effects or prestige. Demanding to have seen is a reminder that judging takes time. And time, today, is our most contested resource.
Perhaps this is why I find myself looking at these ceremonies as one would look at the weather: not for the absolute truth, but for context. Who is speaking? Who is applauded? Who is missing? Which stories become “central” for three hours, before falling back into the flow? I know that all this is orchestrated, that the emotion is calibrated, that the editing of reactions is part of the show. And yet, in the midst of this mechanics, there sometimes arises an awkward sentence, a silence, an unanticipated tear—and I have the impression of seeing, behind the scenes, the fatigue of a human being who carried a film, or the real joy of a team which has finally been watched.
In the evening, when I turn off the screen, there is residual light on the wall, like dust of colors. It's a commonplace phenomenon, but it follows me down the hall. I wondered if our lives were not made of this light: remnants of stories seen, of borrowed dialogues, of music that sticks to gestures. We sometimes say that films “escape” us, that we forget everything. This is false. We forget the plot, yes, but we keep things more secret: a way of entering a room, a way of holding a cup, a courage borrowed from a character, a word that we would not have dared to pronounce without having first heard it from the mouth of another.
And here is the point that bothers me as March 15 approaches: it is not the question of knowing which film “deserves” a trophy. It’s knowing what value I place on my attention. When I give a film two hours, what am I really giving it? A break? A leak? A sentimental education? A mirror? I would like to believe that I choose my images. In reality, I negotiate with them. Some elevate me, others distract me, others tire me; and sometimes a tiny scene—an actor hesitating before responding, a shot of a window, a trembling voice—makes me more present to my own life than all the big statements.
This is perhaps the real reward: not a statuette, not a prize list, but this intact capacity to be touched by a detail. As long as I can still put down the remote, stay, watch, and feel that an image teaches me something about how to live—then cinema, in its own quiet way, continues to hold me. And if one day I'm no longer capable of that, the problem won't come from the screens. It will come from me: from the place where I let my attention be stolen silently.