The Wave

A high school teacher is assigned to teach a week-long project on autocracy, though he would have preferred to cover anarchism. His students dismiss the idea that a dictatorship could ever take hold in modern Germany, confident that their society is too enlightened for such a thing. To prove them wrong, he turns the classroom itself into an experiment in authoritarian rule, built on discipline, group pressure and a shared sense of belonging. The project quickly takes on a life of its own, spreading beyond the class and drawing in students who were never part of it, until the teacher loses control of what he started.

The film is a German production directed by Dennis Gansel, who wrote the screenplay with Peter Thorwarth. It followed his earlier features Das Phantom and Before the Fall, and came before We Are the Night, Mechanic: Resurrection, Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver, Berlin, I Love You and The Tank. Jürgen Vogel plays the teacher Rainer Wenger, with Frederick Lau, Max Riemelt, Jennifer Ulrich, Christiane Paul and Elyas M'Barek among the main cast.

Made for about 5 million dollars, it took roughly 31 million dollars worldwide, a strong return for a German drama. Audiences rate it 7.6/10 on IMDb from around 121,000 votes and 7.5/10 on TMDB from about 3,700 votes, while its critics' score stands at 5.7/10 from 18 reviews, a clear gap between professional and viewer response.