In Waves Trailer: Will Sharpe and Stephanie Hsu Fall for the Surf

What the Trailer Shows

AJ (Sharpe) is a reserved Los Angeles high school student who spends his days drawing and skateboarding with his friends, and is frightened of the water. Kristen (Hsu) is an energetic surfer who finds joy and freedom in the ocean. When they meet at a school dance, curiosity turns into deep love: Kristen teaches AJ to surf and shares the sport’s historical connection to Hawaiian culture, and AJ starts drawing their story so he can hold on to it. The trailer moves from sunlit first love to the illness that will test them, and Netflix calls it a film about finding your soulmate, living life to the fullest and the power of love to shape what we leave behind.

It is the first feature from French director Phuong Mai Nguyen, who took inspiration from David Hockney’s paintings and California light, letting the colours shift as the story darkens. The film opened Critics’ Week at Cannes, where it became Netflix’s first acquisition of the festival, and then screened at Annecy. Fanny Burdino and Samuel Doux wrote the screenplay, Oklou and Rob composed the music, and Silex Films and Anonymous Content produce, with Sharpe and Hsu as executive producers.