This was a year when little guys saved the day for entertainment in India.
While there were hits such as Chhaava, Kantara: A Legend – Chapter 1 and Sitaare Zameen Par, there was also disappointment galore. Salman Khan registered his second-lowest opening ever with Sikandar. Hrithik Roshan and Junior NTR joining hands couldn’t boost War 2 at the box office. Rumours that Shahid Kapoor’s fee for the policeman-with-amnesia drama Deva made up half the film’s budget did nothing to win over audiences.
Films made on shoestring budgets, meanwhile, gave viewers and the industry plenty of joy. Debutant director Rohan Kanawade presented one of 2025’s tenderest stories in the queer romantic drama Sabar Bonda. (It also won a Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.)
Rahul Ravindran’s Rashmika Mandanna-starrer The Girlfriend and the Tamil coming-of-age movie Bad Girl felt like antidotes to the machismo of some of the year’s biggest hits.
India got her first modern female superhero in Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra, which also became the highest-grossing Malayalam film of all time.
On streaming platforms, plenty of shows shone even as they swam against the tide.
Black Warrant (the Zahan Kapoor-starrer set in Tihar Jail, whose second season has sadly been indefinitely postponed) and The Hunt - The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case elegantly sidestepped the clichés that tend to characterise police procedurals. Paatal Lok set a tense Season 2 in Nagaland (kicking off a trend that saw the state serve as setting for a number of shows). Khauf used horror expertly to dig into the violence perpetrated against women.
Here are the rest of my picks for best releases of 2025.
Best in Hollywood: Director Ryan Coogler created an extraordinary work of cinema in Sinners. His vampire film is a period drama designed to make you fall in love with blues music, newcomer Miles Caton’s deep voice, and Michael B Jordan, who is incandescent in a double role. Look out for the cameo by the now-89-year-old guitar legend Buddy Guy.
Best Indian entertainer: Bison Kaalamaadan is writer-director Mari Selvaraj’s tribute to kabaddi player Manathi Ganesan, and it’s everything a mainstream movie should be. From caste politics to spectacular action scenes, father-son dynamics and an age-gap romance, Selvaraj deftly packs it all into this story about an underdog hero.
Best in Bollywood: Dhadak 2 is hamstrung by a lead pair that doesn’t do justice to its script. However, despite its flaws and the 16 cuts imposed on it by the censor board, director Shazia Iqbal’s film stands out for its courage and its poignant portrait of a young Dalit man.
Best conversation-starter: With artificial intelligence taking everyone for a spin, Aranya Sahay’s Humans in the Loop, released on Netflix this year, feels timely and thought-provoking. Whether you agree with its rather rosy view of AI or not, this is a film that will stay with you.
Best series in Hindi: Black, White & Gray – Love Kills feels like a true-crime documentary, but is actually fiction. The cast is superb, particularly Sanjay Kumar Sahu as the chilling, unreliable narrator.
Best series in English: Apple TV had a fantastic 2025, with new seasons of now-classic shows such as Slow Horses and Platonic, but its crowning glory this year is Pluribus. When an alien virus reprograms humanity, a romantasy author finds that she is immune. As everyone else moves on together, what happens to her and the dozen others now excluded from an all-new race? Created by Vince Gilligan of Breaking Bad, Pluribus is science-fiction at its most elegant.
Best binge-watch: The Pitt brings back an old favourite from the days of cable TV: the medical drama. With beautifully drawn character portraits and a fantastic cast, this show is justifiably one of the biggest hits of the year.
Must-watch documentary: The Perfect Neighbor begins with the shooting of 35-year-old mother of four Ajike Owens, by her White neighbour, in a seemingly placid neighbourhood in Florida. Using police bodycam footage, director Geeta Gandbhir puts together a terrifying and heartbreaking portrait of a society divided by racism.
Best Asian drama: The phenomenal success of KPop Demon Hunters notwithstanding, the Koreans faced some serious competition from the Japanese and Chinese this year. Perhaps the cleverest drama came from China: A Dream Within a Dream follows the adventures of an actress who finds herself trapped in a script and is forced to navigate all the tropes of a typical C-drama. Priceless.
(To reach Deepanjana Pal with feedback, write to @dpanjana on Instagram. The views expressed are personal)
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