The 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival is well and truly underway. While the main program opened with Pierre Salvadori’s La Vénus électrique, Semaine de la Critique, one of the parallel sections, showed its love for animation by choosing Phuong Mai Nguyen’s emotionally intense and thought-provoking In Waves. When talking to the director, she mentioned that while she was “already very happy for the selection at Cannes”, she also felt very stressed on the day “to show it, because there were a lot of people”.
However, it seems that despite the stress and the nerves, happiness and love took the upper hand during the opening ceremony as she was truly excited to “share this experience with AJ [Dungo], his wife Monique, and with the whole team, all these people who have contributed so much to the film, and all the people who are here for the love of cinema”.
Speaking of AJ, this beautifully crafted animation is an adaptation of his eponymous graphic novel, based on his life. While Rio Vega and Lyna Khoudri voice the original French movie, Will Sharpe and Stephanie Hsu bring this tearjerker to life in the English version as AJ and Kristen, respectively. The wave-chasing Kristen and the shy animator AJ grow up together and share their love for art and surfing. The older they become, the closer they grow, eventually becoming a couple. However, when tragedy strikes them, their future begins to unravel. While this movie took five to six years to make, Sharpe only came on board in the latter part of the production process, but nevertheless, “it was very joyful,” as he “could really feel the journey the feature had been on with the animation team and, of course, with AJ. It was a very joyful experience to share the film with an audience.”
In Waves is more than a captivating story about Hawaiian surf heritage, love, heartbreak, identity, and the experience of growing up in a mixed-race family — it’s also a celebration of animation itself. For Sharpe, it all struck a personal chord. Not only because his mother is Japanese while his father is British, but also because animation has had a big impact on his life since he was very young. As a kid he “discovered the Studio Ghibli movies and just felt very transported into that whole world as there’s such an imagination to those movies” and his love for animation was clearly one of the reasons for taking on this work as he “felt like it was very beautifully crafted” and loved “the animation style, the transitions between different timelines and the emotional logic to the flow of it.”
This little gem is definitely packed with imagination, a transportive vibe and all the emotions you can think of, and while it doesn’t have a worldwide release date yet (apart from a July release in Belgium and France), studios will absolutely fight for In Waves.