your accent is
(not) the problem.

Seven years ago I moved to France, and somewhere along the way my accent stopped being a bridge and started feeling like a wall. I was job-hunting in a competitive market in Lyon, collecting rejections, slowly turning them into self-criticism. One interview stayed with me — a smooth conversation, then one line from the director that made me doubt my own voice, purely because of how it sounded. It took time to see that rejection as a filter instead of a verdict: not getting that job is what led me to the team I'm with now, the one where I actually feel valued. This video is about that distance — between an accent as a flaw and an accent as a signature.

Part of the same thread as the rest of the archive — identity, and the parts of yourself that get scrutinized before anyone hears what you're actually saying. More of this register lives in Stratus, the full archive of video essays.