With documentaries exploring very recent events, filmmakers can source all the relevant footage and interviews needed in a short period of time. But conventional wisdom suggests that the longer you spend grappling with your subject, the greater the delivery of your message. That said, the urgency of an ongoing issue can far outweigh the merits of sticking to standard journalistic practices.

A faster turnaround was necessary for Kei Pritsker and Michael T Workman’s The Encampments, which arrives barely a year after the specific student protests that it covers. The film’s main focus is the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on Columbia University’s lawn in April 2024, pressuring the New York City university to divest from companies manufacturing weapons used by Israel that target and kill Palestinians – two of the main organising groups were Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine.

This engrossing documentary tracks organisers at Columbia as they’re thrust into the spotlight during their fight for divestment, facing congressional pressure, abuse from Zionist counter-protestors and, eventually, violent police repression, though not before they’ve helped to encourage a wave of further encampments at other universities. Presenting a far more clarifying and empathetic document of the peaceful protesters’ activities and rationale than was ever permitted during the media firestorm that ensued, The Encampments proves essential as an exposé on wild distortion of messaging and the betrayal of institutions’ promoted values.

The film bears no signs of being a rushed job. But if the directors had sat on it for longer, the barely 80-minute feature would likely have greatly expanded in length thanks to still-unfolding developments. Among the events laid out in addendums before the end credits is that in March 2025, ICE agents, acting under orders of the Department of Homeland Security and presenting no warrant, abducted Mahmoud Khalil from his New York home, putting him into immediate deportation proceedings despite Khalil being a permanent US resident with no criminal charges.

An Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, Khalil is one of the more frequent and warmly engaging on-camera presences in The Encampments, having been a lead negotiator in the Columbia protests. At time of writing, Khalil is still in detention but getting op-eds out regarding the breakneck erosion of his rights. By the time this review runs, his fate as an American resident could still be undetermined as the Trump administration continues attacking civil rights, the groundwork having been laid by the Biden administration’s encouragement of crackdown on peaceful protests against genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Yet there is hope: Gazan journalist Bisan Owda is among the talking heads, given appropriate space in the film’s moving closing moments to reflect on the rippling global awakening concerning freedom for the Palestinian people; on the importance of feeling, regardless of how gradually, that they are not alone.

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There is a del­i­cate thresh­old sep­a­rat­ing self-aware­ness from petu­lance, and the direc­tors who know how to best thread it under­stand that say­ing less often does the most. With The Wave, Sebastián Lelio offers a staunch, loud exam­ple of the oppo­site, craft­ing a film that is not only com­fort­able to stay with­in the realm of the self-con­grat­u­la­to­ry but expects you to applaud him for it too.

The Chilean direc­tor fol­lows up his Oscar-win­ning dra­ma A Fan­tas­tic Woman with a musi­cal loose­ly based on the 2018 #MeToo-adja­cent demon­stra­tions that closed mul­ti­ple col­leges in Chile after stu­dents occu­pied the build­ings to demand stronger pun­ish­ment for sex­u­al harass­ment with­in the cam­pus. In this fic­tion­al­ized effort, one such stu­dent is Julia (Daniela Lopez), a music pupil whose big ambi­tions are jux­ta­posed with the hum­ble set­ting of her mother’s mini-mart, where the fam­i­ly also lives.

Lelio cre­ates Julia as a stand-in for the many young women who brave­ly came for­ward with their sto­ries of abuse dur­ing the tit­u­lar move­ment, hav­ing her as the face of the rebel­lion and the key wit­ness for the pro­tes­tors’ case. This piv­otal nar­ra­tive choice is the first of many mishaps in a deeply mis­guid­ed film, as it bur­dens with respon­si­bil­i­ty a char­ac­ter whose entire arc revolves around a pro­nounced resis­tance to vic­tim­iza­tion. The direc­tor isn’t explic­it­ly ask­ing for sym­pa­thy as much as empa­thy for Julia, but there is no shel­ter­ing the char­ac­ter from the pur­pose­ful­ly exhaust­ing fram­ing she is seen through.

Julia point­ed­ly chews gum, the impos­si­bly irri­tat­ing, moist noise a fre­quent sen­so­r­i­al com­pan­ion to her screen pres­ence. After drain­ing it of flavour, she plucks it from her mouth and, still wet, push­es it under whichev­er sur­face is near­est — be it a din­er table or the cold, metal­lic work desk in the cor­ner of a police sta­tion. It is as if Lelio is try­ing to ham­mer in the point that women do not need to be like­able and con­tained to be believed, a plot boomerang that ric­o­chets with great force only achiev­ing condescension.

The gum-chew­ing isn’t the only thing Lelio ham­mers at with gus­to through­out the musi­cal. He often dwells inside the mini-mart, the cam­era almost a safari guide intro­duc­ing the view­er to this world that could not pos­si­bly elic­it any­thing else than a flight response. At the uni­ver­si­ty, sev­er­al scenes con­sist of the same beats, track­ing the young women as they gath­er and dis­perse, gath­er and dis­perse. On the musi­cal front, with the excep­tion of a big num­ber with­in its first min­utes, the film’s first hour is almost entire­ly ded­i­cat­ed to exten­sive­ly lay­ing out a sto­ry that has already been made clear almost from the get-go, a tire­some stretch that dilutes the dra­mat­ic, grandiose poten­tial of the genre.

As it final­ly steps on the gas, The Wave at last ded­i­cates some time to prop­er­ly prod at the thorni­ness of trau­ma and denounce­ment, zoom­ing into Julia’s assault by fel­low stu­dent Max and the spi­ral of guilt and shame it sent her down­wards. Although the musi­cal sequences are wel­come as they at least add some dynamism to the repet­i­tive­ness of what came before, the music proves unin­spired and the lyrics exac­er­bate the tonal issues of the script. ​“Par­a­digm shift, no more stig­ma,” boasts Max, echoed by oth­er assailants and those who sup­port them in a sequence that is meant as satire but lands as bit­ter­ly as the mind­bog­gling­ly self-indul­gent num­ber that fol­lows, when Lelio goes meta to let the audi­ence knows that he is well aware there will be be agnos­tics when it comes to a man direct­ing a film about fem­i­nism and women’s rights.

But here’s the thing: the issue at hand is not as much that this is a man tack­ling con­ver­sa­tions around women’s bod­ies and polit­i­cal sis­ter­hood, but that the man in this case directs with such a grave mas­cu­line gaze and for­eign­ness to the com­plex­i­ties of wom­an­hood that what lingers is the sour taste that the call is com­ing from inside the house. South Amer­i­ca has the world’s high­est rates of misog­y­nis­tic vio­lence, with femi­cide rates grow­ing every year, and abor­tion is still large­ly ille­gal across the con­ti­nent. To have a high-pro­file South Amer­i­can direc­tor shine a light on the real-world impact of fem­i­nism in a con­ti­nent ungoverned by the intri­cate­ly Amer­i­can pol­i­tics of #MeToo is a heart­en­ing propo­si­tion, but, unfor­tu­nate­ly, it feels like The Wave doesn’t want you to empathise with the cause as much as it wants you to praise its director.