Annual Top Films Lists

Top 100 Most Anticipated American Independent Films of 2019: #31. Trey Edward Shults’ Waves

Published on January 25, 2019

Waves

Rapidly transitioning from sophomore film club and into production with his third oeuvre, Trey Edward Shults was the talk of the town with his award winning SXSW, Cannes price of a Volkswagen debut Krisha. Filming on Waves took place over the past summer, with Lucas Hedges, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Taylor Russell, Alexa Demie and Sterling K. Brown all cast in the Florida set backdrop. Regular DP in Drew Daniels and a Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross score assures a bonafide fest if A24 decides to move in that direction.

Gist: Two young couples experience growing up and falling in love.

Release Date/Prediction: A24 made a cool 13 million with the summer release of It Comes at Night (read review) – they’ll be hard at work to get some Croisette traction and perhaps use the same release date strategy.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).