In Waves

AnimationRomanceDrama

In cinemas 3mo later · Digital Dec 11, 2026 (US)

Programme: Discovery
Year: 2026
Runtime: 91 min
Country: France, Belgium
Language: English
Premiere: International Premiere
TMDB rating: 7.2 (26 votes)
In cinemas: Dec 11, 2026 (US)

In Los Angeles, AJ, a shy teenager, meets Kristen. She lives for surfing; he loves skateboarding and drawing. They fall madly in love, and a happy future seems within reach. But everything changes when Kristen faces a sudden illness. Together, they face adversity, driven by the strength of their love, their friends, and their newly shared passion for surfing and the ocean.

From the TIFF programme

Set under the confectionery pink and blue skies of California, this animated film narrates the love story between a young skater and a surfer who share a mutual passion for the ocean.

Grief comes in waves, a universal truth that is especially true here. For her debut feature, director Phuong Mai Nguyen adapts AJ Dungo’s graphic novel to tell a personal tale of friendship, love, and loss. AJ (Will Sharpe), a young skater, meets Kristen (Stephanie Hsu), a young surfer living with cancer, and the two bond over a passion for the ocean during their brief time together. Tracing the Hawaiian origins of surfing, the film renders water as a sacred element with spiritual depth, offering a joy and strength that the two find solace in as they confront her illness.

Through a mix of 2D animation and 3D tools, Nguyen skilfully brings the intimate memoir to the big screen with a visual language that embodies all that water can be: still and turbulent, clear and murky, restorative and devastating. Her extensive research — a trip across the Pacific coast in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Hawaii — pays off greatly, bringing beauty and texture to the skate parks, beaches, and multicultural landscape of America that serve as backdrops to our protagonists' emotional journey. Just as Dungo keeps the memory of Kristen alive through his drawings, Nguyen continues her legacy through a gentle coming-of-age story that depicts a relationship between teenage lovers who find their place in the universe through surfing.

ROBYN CITIZEN