Summary: An ultra-thin viscous film on a substrate is susceptible to rupture instabilities driven by van der Waals attractions. When a unidirectional ‘wind’ shear \(\tau \) is applied to the free surface, the rupture instability in two dimensions is suppressed when \(\tau \) exceeds a critical value \(\tau _{c}\) and is replaced by a permanent finite-amplitude structure, an intermolecular-capillary wave, that travels at approximately the speed of the surface. For small amplitudes, the wave is governed by the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation. If three-dimensional disturbances are allowed, the shear is decoupled from disturbances perpendicular to the flow, and line rupture would occur. In this case, replacing the unidirectional shear with a shear whose direction rotates with angular speed, \(\hat {\omega}\), suppresses the rupture if \(\tau \gtrsim 2\tau _{c}\). For the most dangerous wavenumber, \(\tau _{c} \approx 10^{ - 2}\) dyn cm\(^{ - 2}\) at \(\hat {\omega} \approx 1\) rad s\(^{-1}\) for a film with physical properties similar to water at a thickness of 100 nm.