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SummaryWhen a quiet music student joins a feminist uprising on her university campus, her decision to speak out transforms a protest into a powerful collective movement fueled by song, courage, and solidarity.
Directed By:Sebastián Lelio
Written By:Sebastián Lelio, Manuela Infante, Josefina Fernández, Paloma Salas
The Wave
Metascore
Mixed or Average
52
User score
Available after 4 ratings
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Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
52
20% Positive
1 Review
1 Review
80% Mixed
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Jun 17, 2026
67
La Ola is far from perfect, often losing sight of its broader ideas for less well-executed narrative beats that don’t always cohere, but it still finds a tune where it counts.
Jun 17, 2026
60
The Wave is nothing if not ambitious, and in its bittersweet ending it reaches a melancholic, nuanced understanding that once the feminist wave broke, the backlash began. But the kind of complex debates about consent, vigilante justice and empowerment that are deployed here sit uneasily in what is in some ways a classical female self-realisation musical.
Jun 17, 2026
60
Aesthetic flourishes abound, which make it an entertaining viewing experience, but one does wish that the narrative was a touch more complex. Lelio embeds some compelling meta-textual moments — ones that mostly address that fact that he’s a man tackling this subject — but the actual story of Julia can feel secondary to the melodic pageantry.
Jun 18, 2026
50
Even at its most formally playful, the film is marked by an earnestness of tone that makes it feel like work, especially given a two-hour-plus runtime that exposes the repetitiveness of its rhetoric and the sparseness of its drama.
Jun 17, 2026
50
Even at its most formally playful, the film is marked by an earnestness of tone that makes it feel like work, especially given a two-hour-plus runtime that exposes the repetitiveness of its rhetoric and the sparseness of its drama.
User score
Available after 4 ratings
tbd
0% Positive
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
100% Mixed
2 Ratings
2 Ratings
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
Jun 28, 2026
4
The 'Emilia Pérez' of gender violence. This musical attempts to highlight the feminist cause in Chile, but director Sebastián Lelio ends up celebrating himself with an egocentric exercise that ignores the complexities of systematic abuse. Visually striking, yes, although most of the songs lack good lyrics (the first musical number is perhaps the only one worthwhile in any sense). In short, this film trivializes the movement, almost to the point of parody, with so many caricatured characters.
Production Company:
- Banco Estado
- Fabula
- Fondo de Fomento Audiovisual
- Fremantle
- Participant
Release Date:Jun 26, 2026
Duration:2 h 9 m
Tagline:When She Speaks Up, A Movement Rises
Website:
Awards
Cannes Film Festival
• 1 Nomination
José María Forqué Awards
• 1 Nomination
