Waves is a film adaptation of the book ‘The Waves’ (1931) by Virginia Woolf. The six main characters in Waves are constantly trying to recover the sense of harmony they knew as small children. Through their thoughts, the intensity of their childhood, the optimism of their youth and the disillusionment as they grow older are described. Their perceptions and emotions move back and forth like waves throughout the narrative. The sketch of the thoughts of these six characters, reflecting their development from child to adult, is a challenge to confront one’s own life.  

Waves, in its form, is not a novelisation in the usual sense. The images are inspired by the form in which the novel was written. In the film narrative, the viewer is taken on a journey of discovery. Through elements of the present, he is slowly led to the historical fiction, as it can only be relived in film. As the story progresses, the carefully constructed fiction proves to no longer hold and disintegrates. The illusion that life, reality, is a continuous story, whose events follow each other logically, disappears. 

Annette Apon (1949, Netherlands) was educated at the Dutch Film Academy. In 1968, she founded the film magazine Skrien with fellow students and in 1974 she was among the founders of the film collective Amsterdams Stadsjournaal. Waves is Apon’s first feature film. Since 1973, she has directed some 40 films, both feature films and documentaries. she has also directed a number of theatre productions.