Die Welle

The Wave

(Germany, 2008, 107 minutes)

A high-school teacher is assigned a weekly student project on autocracy, and, stunned at his students' assertion that a dictatorship is impossible in our day and age, leads them into an experiment that goes horribly wrong. Powerful drama that updates the infamous “third wave” experiment that took place in the US in 1967 by transplanting it to modern-day Germany within the structure of a high-school movie; no points for subtlety, but that was hardly the point in the first place.

Constantin Film presents, with the financial support of Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg, Filmförderungsanstalt and Deutsches Filmfernsehfonds, a Christian Becker production for Rat-Pack Filmproduktion, in co-production with Constantin Filmproduktion, Medienfonds German Film Productions and B. A. Produktion. Starring Jürgen Vogel, Frederick Lau, Jennifer Ulrich, Max Riemelt, Christiane Paul. Directed by Dennis Gansel; produced by Christian Becker; screenplay by Dennis Gansel, Peter Thorwarth, based on the original experiment by William Ron Jones and the 1981 teleplay The Wave by Johnny Dawkins and Ron Birnbach; music by Heiko Maile; director of photography (colour, widescreen), Torsten Breuer; production designer, Knut Loewe; costume designer, Ivana Milos; film editor, Ueli Christen.