Phuong Mal Nguyen's directorial debut is a visual triumph β gorgeous animation that honors surfing culture while delivering an emotionally devastating love story. Netflix is clearly positioning this for awards season, and with Stephanie Hsu anchoring the English-language version alongside Will Sharpe, they have the star power to make waves beyond the festival circuit.
This isn't just another animated romance β it's based on A.J. Dungo's 2019 graphic novel memoir, which means real grief, a real person processing real loss at the center of this film. Sources say the Cannes Critics' Week premiere left audiences visibly shaken. Netflix picked it up immediately out of that screening. That's not coincidence β that's a streamer sensing awards bait wrapped in heartbreak.
The English-language version premiered June 22, 2026 at Annecy Film Festival in competition, with Stephanie Hsu (Kristen) and Will Sharpe (A.J.). Netflix acquired the film out of Cannes Critics' Week last month β Cannes ran May 14-25, meaning this film screened there roughly a month before Annecy. The French version opens July 1 in France starring Rio Vega and Lyna Khoudri.
Bring tissues. This is the Love Story for a generation that grew up on streaming, and Stephanie Hsu just added another devastating performance to her rapidly expanding resume.
If you've ever had your heart broken by a movie you weren't warned about, In Waves will do it again β and this time it'll blame the ocean. Netflix dropped Phuong Mal Nguyen's debut feature at the Annecy Film Festival on Monday, June 22, 2026, and critics are already reaching for their sleeves. The animated feature, clocking in at a lean 90 minutes, is being described as a West Coast Love Story β except instead of Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw trudging through East Coast snow, you've got surfer girl extraordinaire Kristen (voiced by Stephanie Hsu) and her water-phobic counterpart A.J. (Will Sharpe) spinning out of a high school dance party into a love story that hits you like a riptide you didn't see coming.
Stephanie Hsu is the name everyone's going to be talking about, and not just because she voiced it β she's living in her Oscar-bait era. Since Everything Everywhere All at Once made her a household name, Hsu has been quietly building one of the most emotionally precise acting rΓ©sumΓ©s in Hollywood. Here, as Kristen, she gets to play someone whose entire identity is wrapped up in the ocean, only to face losing it β and more β when her pain turns out to be cancer.
The decision to amputate her leg rather than give up surfing isn't just a plot point; it's the film's emotional thesis statement about what people will sacrifice to stay whole. Netflix acquired In Waves directly out of Cannes Film Festival Critics' Week last month, where it opened the sidebar program before making its Annecy competition premiere. The streamer is already signaling serious awards ambitions β Deadline reports Netflix plans to shepherd this through awards season globally.
That's not idle talk; that's a campaign in motion. For comparison, Critics' Week openers at Cannes have launched films into Oscar contention before (see: Portrait of a Lady on Fire). Nguyen's film has the animation, the voice work, and most importantly, the gut-punch story to back up that kind of push.
The film is based on A.J. Dungo's 2019 graphic novel memoir, which means this California surfing romance isn't fictionally tragic β it's actually someone's life rendered in animated waves. Screenwriters Fanny Burdino and Samuel Doux adapted it as a relationship story told through A.J.'s eyes: his art project drawings of the ocean and of Kristen are woven throughout, quietly foreshadowing what's coming like a wave you can see forming but can't outrun.
The film also dives deep into Hawaiian surfing history, paying homage to Duke Kahanamoku and tracing how the sport became religion for devotees like Kristen. It's not just a love story between two people β it's a love letter to an entire culture built around riding waves that take you over but never under.
