La ola

Sebastián Lelio, Chile

2025 - 2h09

Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival

Sebastián Lelio is a Chilean director and screenwriter of Argentine origin, who began his career with short films. 

La ola is a musical of rare power and freshness. The film is radical in its message, deconstructing patriarchy from every angle, yet it is also visually striking in its unapologetic kitsch.

In the spring of 2018, a wave of protests, like a tsunami of rage, swept across Chile when around thirty universities and a dozen secondary schools were blockaded by schoolgirls and female students in a surge of protest against the harassment they had endured until then amid widespread indifference.

Julia, a music student, joins her university’s movement to speak out against the harassment and abuse that students have endured for far too long. As she finds the courage to share a haunting memory with her fellow students, she unexpectedly becomes a central figure in the movement. Her testimony, both intimate and complex, becomes a wave that shakes, unsettles and disarms a polarized society.  

Through the voice of Julia, the story’s main character, a reality emerges that is, sadly, all too common for many women around the world.

The voice proves to be an essential tool for protest; the voices of these women, silenced; a rumbling breath that must be harnessed to swell the tide of revolt.

A musical film, but also a manifesto!