The reverberations that accompany romantic experience are a force that can be felt on many levels: all-encompassing, overwhelming, and often arising without warning. In packaging passion, few have encapsulated the mood quite like the greats of Italian cinema, bringing a sense of majesty and melodrama to the romantic genre, and the nuances that play out from within it. Against the backdrop of breathtaking landscapes and baroque grandeur, the passion that drives Italy’s love affair with food, art, and greatness of all forms also perpetuates its vision of romance on film, with scenarios shaped by the beauty that surrounds them.

In short film Senti L’Energia, German director Nathan Engelhardt explores the Italian romance genre through the energy bond between lovers and friends, fuelled by his personal understanding of love, and memories born in Lake Como. Translated from Italian as “feel the energy”, the film’s narrative emerged from shared moments in Engelhardt’s own relationship, capturing the undefinable chemistry on which intimacy is founded. Living and shooting together under one roof, which doubled as a key location, during production, the cast and crew existed among one another 24-hours a day, building a sense of closeness reflected in the film’s intensity.

Situated where friendship ends and romance begins, Engelhardt considers this precise point as a catalyst for conflict that can just as easily melt into new ties and feelings once diffused. Part questioning monogamy, part reframing romance and its malleability, through the interconnectedness of its leads, Senti L’Energia studies the transmutations in relationships, reflecting upon shifts initiated by the electric energy that defines key moments within them.