The nonlinear stability of falling film flow down an inclined flat plane is investigated when an electric field acts normal to the plane. A systematic asymptotic expansion is used to derive a fully nonlinear long-wave model equation for the scaled interface, where higher-order terms must be retained to make the long-wave approximation valid for long times. The effect of the electric field is to introduce a non-local term which comes from the potential region above the liquid film. This term is always linearly destabilizing and produces growth rates proportional to the cubic power of the wavenumber – surface tension is included and provides a short wavelength cutoff. Even in the absence of an electric field, the fully nonlinear equation can produce singular solutions after a finite time. This difficulty is avoided at smaller amplitudes where the weakly nonlinear evolution is governed by an extension of the Kuramoto–Sivashinsky equation. This equation has solutions which exist for all time and allows for a complete study of the nonlinear behaviour of competing physical mechanisms: long-wave instability above a critical Reynolds number, short-wave damping due to surface tension and intermediate growth due to the electric field. Through a combination of analysis and extensive numerical experiments, we find parameter ranges that support non-uniform travelling waves, time-periodic travelling waves and complex nonlinear dynamics including chaotic interfacial oscillations. It is established that a sufficiently high electric field will drive the system to chaotic oscillations, even when the Reynolds number is smaller than the critical value below which the non-electrified problem is linearly stable. A particular case of this is Stokes flow.