“Take life lightly, for lightness is not superficial, but gliding above things, not having weights on your heart.” This is the quote from Postmodernist writer Italo Calvino that inspired director Luca Werner to explore the carefree days of youth in this film.

Lupine opens with a young man adoring a Lupine plant, a vibrant wildflower that grows throughout the Mediterranean and marks the beginning of Spring and new life. “I think there are certain moments in our youth where we feel completely light and careless, like we are in a flow,” says Werner, who followed a group of three real-life friends on a coastal sojourn across Rhodes. “I don’t believe that these moments end when we grow up. I believe we get a glimpse of them from time to time.”

Unfettered by social schedules or work commitments, the young men enjoy the dog days of a Greek summer as they drift from ancient ruins to solitary beaches in search of new, vertiginous diving spots.

“I had a chance to build a real connection with them and I could slip into the role of the observer,” says Werner. 

Although staged partly as a documentary, the intimacy between the director and the young men is palpable. The camera's slow and methodical movements over beads of aquamarine sweat on sunkissed skin create a congenial warmth that places the audience right there beside the young men in Rhodes.

“As an anecdote on life," the director adds, " I hope Lupine provides an insight into the moment of lightness that Calvino wrote about.”