σκιᾶς ὄναρ ἄνθρωπος. ἀλλ᾽ ὅταν αἴγλα διόσδοτος ἔλθῃ,
λαμπρὸν φέγγος ἔπεστιν ἀνδρῶν καὶ μείλιχος αἰών.
— Pindar, 5th century BCE, Pythian Ode 8

“We are but a dream of a shadow,” wrote Pindar. “Yet when Zeus gives his radiance, the light of life appears, and its sweetness too.”
Like many ancient Greek insights, this vision of fragility and sudden brightness has survived through centuries of art and thought. From Shakespeare to Keats, from Edgar Allan Poe to Virginia Woolf, poets and artists have returned to this truth.
It is also what director Jean-Pierre Jeunet captured in his timeless, award-winning French film Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain (Amélie), telling the story of a shy young woman in Paris who discovers joy in small details and secret acts of kindness, enough to transform the world around her.
“Amélie has a strange feeling of absolute harmony,” the narrator observes. The same feeling connects a long chain of artists, from ancient Greece to today.

This video continues that chain: lyre virtuoso Lina Palera performs Amélie on the LUTHIEROS Lyre of Olympus, handcrafted in Greece by the LUTHIEROS family. In a dream-like lavender field, her ancient lyre sounds both fragile and eternal, offering a moment of brightness and ancient clarity to a buzzing modern world.