Backdrop fallback

Breaking the Waves

Breaking the Waves

Share

Breaking the Waves

"Love is a mighty power."

1996

2h 39m

7.5(1143 votes)

Drama

Romance

Overview

In a small, conservative Scottish village, an oilman is paralyzed in an accident. His wife, who prayed for his return, feels guilty; even more, when he urges her to have sex with another.

Where to Watch

Stream

MUBI

MUBI Amazon Channel

Links & Resources

Social & External

Production Companies

Zentropa Entertainments

SVT Drama

Nordisk Film & TV Fond

La Sept Cinéma

VPRO

DR TV

YLE

ZDF

The people behind it

Cast & crew

10 featured cast members

Starring

Emily Watson

Emily Watson

Bess McNeill

Stellan Skarsgård

Stellan Skarsgård

Jan Nyman

Katrin Cartlidge

Katrin Cartlidge

Dodo McNeill

Jean-Marc Barr

Jean-Marc Barr

Terry

Adrian Rawlins

Adrian Rawlins

Dr. Richardson

Jonathan Hackett

Priest

Sandra Voe

Sandra Voe

Mother

Udo Kier

Udo Kier

Sadistic Sailor

Mikkel Gaup

Mikkel Gaup

Pits

Roef Ragas

Roef Ragas

Pim

Creative team

Directed by: Lars von Trier
Written by: Lars von Trier
Produced by: Peter Aalbæk Jensen
Vibeke Windeløv

Similar Movies

The Power and the Glory

The Power and the Glory

Based on Graham Greene's novel about a flawed but devoted priest in 1930s Mexico who attempts to perform his duties while eluding a police lieutenant determined to capture him.

The Witching Hour

The Witching Hour

O, a creator who has become lost within his own creation. As Death arrives at 3:33 am—the witching hour—to claim him, O is forced to confront the flaws in his work and his own mistakes. Through a series of flashbacks, the film reveals O's influence on the world he built, using various characters from different eras to maintain his followers' worship. The narrative explores themes of creation, legacy, and the consequences of a creator’s flawed intervention in their own work, ultimately suggesting that his removal is the only way for the game (a metaphor for life) to be truly fixed.

Sacred Flesh

Sacred Flesh

Taunted by visions of Mary Magdalene, who reveals the confessions of the younger nuns at the convent, the Mother Superior's mind is filled with the violent, sexual acts of her fellow sisters.

Aathmakatha

Aathmakatha

Kochubaby, a blind man, falls in love with Mary, a blind orphan girl, and gets married to her. Unfortunately, Mary dies in an accident and Kochubaby struggles to look after their only daughter.

Macbeth

Macbeth

This is a very theatrical version, full of sound & fury, histrionics and big arm movements. Cynical audiences might not buy into it, but if you were to go back to the early 1600s this is probably the way you'd see it. The plot of Macbeth, if you were snoozing during high school English class, is about an 11th century Scottish warrior who hatches a dubious plan to steal the throne. Spurred on by his wife Lady Macbeth, who wears the pants in the household, he finds himself swiftly slipping down the path of evil.

No Picnic

No Picnic

Down-and-out jukebox operator Macabee Cohn wanders the cheap tenements, dive bars, and derelict streets of the East Village in search of a mysterious woman in a striped dress.

Go Ask Alice

Go Ask Alice

A 15-year-old girl in late 1960's America is inadvertently sucked into an odyssey of sex and drugs. She eventually seeks help.

The Trilogy

The Trilogy

Three brothers who just lost their mother have to deal with their loss; all cling onto different things.

Cecile

Cecile

A woman wakes up next to her dead husband. She refuses the fact that he is dead and pretends to her family that he's still alive.

Worship Awry

Worship Awry

This film follows a worship leader who questions her faith after a robbery incident.

Hitchcock

Hitchcock

Following his great success with "North by Northwest," director Alfred Hitchcock makes a daring choice for his next project: an adaptation of Robert Bloch's novel "Psycho." When the studio refuses to back the picture, Hitchcock decides to pay for it himself in exchange for a percentage of the profits. His wife, Alma Reville, has serious reservations about the film but supports him nonetheless. Still, the production strains the couple's marriage.

The Goddess

The Goddess

A young prostitute, who is trying to give her infant son a good start in life, must contend with a coercive pimp and the prejudices of others.

Street Angel

Street Angel

In old Shanghai, two sisters, a prostitute and a singer, try to escape from the local scoundrels with the help of a trumpet player and a newspaper seller.

The Hero

The Hero

Arindam, a matinee idol, is going by train to collect an acting award. On the train, he is confronted by Aditi, a journalist who somewhat unwillingly starts to take his interview. Arindam, won over by Aditi's naivete, starts to disclose his past, his fears and his secrets.

The Blot

The Blot

Professor Griggs, teaching at the college, doesn't get paid a living wage; his next door neighbor, successful shoemaker Olsen, has money and plentiful food, while the Griggses have hardly any. When the professor's rich student Phil West falls for beautiful Griggs daughter Amelia and also befriends the poor Reverend Gates (a young man who is also in love with Amelia), he observes the difference in his life and theirs and tries to help make a difference.

The Butterfly House

The Butterfly House

An engaged couple returns to the groom's ancestral home after his aunt's death. But a ghostly bride who hides a dark family secret threatens their peace.

In the Fire

In the Fire

A doctor from New York travels to a remote plantation in the 1890s to care for a disturbed boy who seems to have inexplicable abilities. She begins treating the child, but in doing so, ignites a war between science and religion as the local priest believes the boy is possessed by the devil and the cause of the village's woes.

Soleil O

Soleil O

An educated native of Mauritania tries to find work in Paris but encounters difficulty because of his race.

Gregory Go Boom

Gregory Go Boom

A paraplegic man leaves home for the first time only to discover that life on the outside is not like he had imagined it.

The Shock of the Future

The Shock of the Future

Paris, 1978. In a male-dominated music industry, Ana uses new electronic machines to make herself heard, thus creating a new sound that is destined to mark the decades to come: the music of the future.

Recommended Movies

Young Adam

Young Adam

A young drifter working on a river barge disrupts his employers' lives while hiding the fact that he knows more about a dead woman found in the river than he admits.

The Proposition

The Proposition

Father Michael McKinnon goes from the UK to Boston circa 1935. For unknown reasons, he avoids at all costs the most prominent parishioners, Arthur and Eleanor Barret. Meanwhile Eleanor and Arthur desperately want to have a child, but Arthur is sterile, so they hire Harvard law student Roger Martin to impregnate Eleanor, but unfortunately Roger falls in love with her.

Bastard Out of Carolina

Bastard Out of Carolina

A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.

The Outrun

The Outrun

Fresh out of rehab, Rona returns to the Orkney Islands—a place both wild and beautiful, right off the Scottish coast. Now 29 and after more than a decade of living life on the edge in London, where she both found and lost love, Rona attempts to come to terms with her troubled past. As she reconnects with the dramatic landscape where she grew up, memories of her traumatic childhood merge with more recent challenging events that have set her on the path to recovery.

Bitter Moon

Bitter Moon

A passenger on a cruise ship develops an irresistible infatuation with an eccentric paraplegic's wife.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post

The Miseducation of Cameron Post

Pennsylvania, 1993. After getting caught with another girl, teenager Cameron Post is sent to a conversion therapy center run by the strict Dr. Lydia Marsh and her brother, Reverend Rick, whose treatment consists in repenting for feeling “same sex attraction.” Cameron befriends fellow sinners Jane and Adam, thus creating a new family to deal with the surrounding intolerance.

Ae Fond Kiss...

Ae Fond Kiss...

A young man upsets his Punjabi family when he falls in love with an Irish schoolteacher.

The Shipping News

The Shipping News

An emotionally-beaten man with his young daughter moves to his ancestral home in Newfoundland to reclaim his life.

Braveheart

Braveheart

Enraged at the slaughter of Murron, his new bride and childhood love, Scottish warrior William Wallace slays a platoon of the local English lord's soldiers. This leads the village to revolt and, eventually, the entire country to rise up against English rule.

Macbeth

Macbeth

Scotland, 11th century. Driven by the twisted prophecy of three witches and the ruthless ambition of his wife, warlord Macbeth, bold and brave, but also weak and hesitant, betrays his good king and his brothers in arms and sinks into the bloody mud of a path with no return, sown with crime and suspicion.

Tell It to the Bees

Tell It to the Bees

Dr. Jean Markham returns to the town she left as a teenager to take over her late father's medical practice. When a school-yard scuffle lands Charlie in her surgery, she invites him to visit the hives in her garden and tell his secrets to the bees, as she once did. The new friendship between the boy and the bee keeper brings his mother Lydia into Jean's world.

The Assessment

The Assessment

In a climate change-ravaged world, a utopian society optimizes life, including parenthood assessments. A successful couple faces scrutiny by an evaluator over seven days to determine their fitness for childbearing.

Macbeth

Macbeth

Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders his king and takes the throne for himself.

Rob Roy

Rob Roy

In the highlands of Scotland in the 1700s, Rob Roy tries to lead his small town to a better future, by borrowing money from the local nobility to buy cattle to herd to market. When the money is stolen, Rob is forced into a Robin Hood lifestyle to defend his family and honour.

The Safety of Objects

The Safety of Objects

In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.

The Tragedy of Macbeth

The Tragedy of Macbeth

Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders his king and takes the throne for himself.

Three Christs

Three Christs

Dr. Alan Stone breaks new ground for treatment of the mentally ill through an experiment on three paranoid schizophrenic patients who believe they are Jesus Christ.

Red Road

Red Road

Jackie is a CCTV operator. One day, a man shows his face on her monitor, a man she hoped never to see again. Now she has no choice and is compelled to confront him.

Clash by Night

Clash by Night

An embittered woman seeks escape in marriage, only to fall for her husband’s best friend.

The Ledge

The Ledge

A thriller in which a battle of philosophies between a fundamentalist Christian and an atheist who shares an apartment with a gay friend escalates into a lethal battle of wills.