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The Green Wave

Play trailer Poster for The Green Wave Released Aug 10, 2012 1h 20m Documentary Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
91% Tomatometer 23 Reviews 62% Popcornmeter 1,000+ Ratings
Filmmaker Ali Samadi Ahadi draws on archival footage, animation, blogs, Twitter postings and more to document Iran's Green Revolution.

Critics Reviews

View All (23) Critics Reviews
Peter Rainer Christian Science Monitor It offers a rare glimpse into the insurgents' long-held hopes for reform. This green wave, as a blogger remarks, is a tidal wave. Rated: B+ Aug 24, 2012 Full Review Tom Keogh Seattle Times A wrenching but illuminating look at what actually happened during Iran's Green Revolution in 2009-10. Rated: 3.5/4 Aug 23, 2012 Full Review Rachel Saltz New York Times For all its omissions and problems, "The Green Wave" communicates certain basic truths effectively: Many Iranians want their voices to be heard and their votes to count. Rated: 3/5 Aug 16, 2012 Full Review Richard Propes TheIndependentCritic.com It may very well present the finest blending of animation with live-action that the big screen has seen created. Rated: 4.0/4.0 Sep 9, 2020 Full Review Louis Proyect rec.arts.movies.reviews A reminder that the first instance of the "Arab Spring" might have occurred in Iran. A reminder that the thirst for human rights and political freedom is universal. Oct 26, 2013 Full Review Brent Simon Shared Darkness Striking and powerful, The Green Wave serves as an inventive registering of the turmoil, upheaval and governmental crackdown of the Arab Spring. Rated: B+ Oct 14, 2012 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View All (9) audience reviews
Audience Member Didn't have the effect that I thought it would have... Worth seeing, to be sure, though. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/20/23 Full Review walter m As an examination into the events leading up to and following the 2009 Iranian national elections, "The Green Wave" takes a more emtional route than an informational one. Overall, it is not as insightful as it could have been, although it does a good job of bringing up some of the political shenanigans of the ruling party. Along these same lines, more could have been done here to probe the country's arcane political structure of a usually passively repressive regime that holds elections as a form of show for critics, both internally and internationally.(All of which makes the political organizing that much more brave.) Some of that probably has to do with relying so much on anonymous blog posts and twitter feeds and I am not sure we are at a point where we can rely on them as a source material for a documentary. What speaks to me more than anything else here is the invaluable cell phone footage, capturing everything from the rallies to post election brutality. Of the animated footage, it is mostly neither here nor there, but there are some images of torture that I will be unable to shake off for a long while that just as much reminds me of the work of Frank Miller. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member A Truth that comes surfaces Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/12/23 Full Review Audience Member A pretty creative look at the 2009 election in Iran and the violence that insued afterwards. The movie mixes several ways to get this across: cell phone and camcorder images provided by protestors, interviews and animated sequences designed to show the experiences of several people. The movie is absolutely brutal at times and depicts how hard it was for the protestors. The movie definitely is showing that there is injustice and that the people are not free in Iran, but the animated sequences run just a tad bit too long and start popping up for what I have to assume is because of the budget and no other "actual" footage was available. I overall enjoyed the film and found it was an eye opener on a key issue! Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/04/23 Full Review Mike M A demonstration of the art of the modern documentarist, having to piece together a variety of different media (mobile-phone footage, Tweets, podcasts, news archive) into a coherent whole. The problem the 21st century documentarist faces is not a dearth of material, but an excess (in this instance, everything the bloggers made available online, just for starters), posing the additional problem of having to make the right choices. Ahadi makes a good deal of these, although the animation remains his film's weakest aspect: falling some way short of the artistry of a "Persepolis" or the emotional depth of "Waltz with Bashir", it seems to be there merely to give us something to look at while the bloggers' words are read out - to distinguish "The Green Wave" from that wave of transcript-based theatrical experiences seeking to make compelling drama from everyday Iranians' Blogger accounts. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 10/04/11 Full Review Audience Member Very moving... Very depressing... Very much worth watching. Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/07/23 Full Review Read all reviews
The Green Wave

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Movie Info

Synopsis Filmmaker Ali Samadi Ahadi draws on archival footage, animation, blogs, Twitter postings and more to document Iran's Green Revolution.
Director
Ali Samadi Ahadi
Screenwriter
Ali Samadi Ahadi
Distributor
Red Flag Releasing
Genre
Documentary
Original Language
German
Release Date (Theaters)
Aug 10, 2012, Limited
Release Date (Streaming)
Sep 11, 2015
Runtime
1h 20m