Chile's feminist "wave" bursts into Cannes

They raised their voices and took over universities. Oscar-winning Sebastián Lelio presents "The Wave" in Cannes, the musical revival of the feminist protests that shook Chile in 2018.

Lelio's new film, part of Cannes Première, an out-of-competition section, is a feminist musical that tells the story of the origins of a wave of protests in the South American country against sexual abuse, gender-based violence, and some deep-rooted and retrograde practices in colleges and schools.

The 51-year-old Chilean filmmaker follows Julia, a music student who, almost unwittingly, becomes involved in the protests and eventually becomes their leader.

One of the first scenes already sets the pace of the film: the students go out into the courtyard and with a choreographed crowd, they unfurl a banner that reads "At this university, rapists graduate."

"Contemporary Musical"

Lelio, who won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film with "Fantastic Woman" (2017), explains that in 2018 he was living in Germany but was in Chile when the movement broke out.

"I saw the women's march with colorful masks, many of them bare-breasted," she said in an interview with AFP on Saturday. "I thought it had incredible strength and rebellion."

It was also said that it was a good subject for something he had been thinking about for a long time: "A contemporary musical" about current events.

Despite the lack of tradition in Latin America for this genre, Lelio favors it because, he says, musicals embody inventiveness , playfulness, and expressionism. It's "a great opportunity to continue escaping the anchor of realism (...) which also has its limitations."

But, as indicated at the beginning of the story, the film is loosely inspired by some university shots from that time.

The director doesn't forget all the investigative work that was done with people who lived through the outbreak and to gather testimonies.

"It was incredibly important to ground it in real experiences and then take off from there," he explains. "From that work emerged, not so much the structure of the film, but its substance."

The musical and choreographic part was very complex, the director points out, due to all the interplay between all the departments, between the writing, the songs and the melody .

Some of the musical numbers are inevitably reminiscent of Las Tesis, the Chilean feminist collective that went viral in 2019 for their performance of "A Rapist in Your Path."

"The waves return"

"Because of the scale of the project, it's the most laborious thing I've had to do," admits Lelio, who has shot several films in the United States, such as "Disobedience" (2017) with Rachel Weisz and "Gloria Bell" (2018), a remake of his own film with Julianne Moore.

To find actresses, they held mass auditions in drama schools .

From there came Julia (Daniela López) and the other students who joined the uprising, wearing red hoods, singing feminist slogans, and performing combative choreography.

Although these actresses had little film experience, they did possess a great ability to adapt and learn quickly. "This generation has a very spontaneous way with dancing, thanks to TikTok... There's a much more natural quality to it than the older generation," says Lelio.

And above all, they were at the protests and lived through those months of mobilizations.

Lelio, whose filmography is almost entirely composed of stories about strong women , knows that "The Wave" is coming out at a time when, in some countries, women's rights are being reversed.

"The pendulum is swinging back, and the retaliation against women's advancements is out in the open and in their faces," she says. "But the pendulum swings back and forth, and the waves roll back."