The 15 Best Indian Films of 2025

In 2025, Indian cinema invented within the box. Conventions weren’t broken so much as lightly tweaked—at times to stunning effect, as in Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra. Malayalam cinema, as usual, set the pace and tone for the year, making quick, confident strides across a variety of genres. Mainstream Hindi cinema, meanwhile, leaned stubbornly into familiarity. While Saiyaara was a soft-centred throwback, the year’s biggest hits—noisy, masculine, cultist—echoed the modern blockbuster playbook. The liveliest work in Hindi cinema unfolded in the independent space, with lyrical stories of connection and change, identity and community. Ironically, it was a studio film—Neeraj Ghaywan’s sincere, empathetic Homebound—that dominated awards conversations.

Kannada cinema’s year makes for an interesting case study. Kantara: Chapter 1 roared at the box-office with spectacle and fury. Meanwhile, Su From So—a delightful horror comedy that became a surprise hit—spoke to the power of blending genre with cultural specificity.

As we wrap up the year, the team at The Hollywood Reporter India list their favourite Indian films of 2025. The movies are presented in no specific order:

Lokah Chapter One: Chandra

Language: Malayalam

Director: Dominic Arun

Imagine the ridiculousness of this proposition: let’s combine a female superhero movie with a backstory from a centuries’ old Malayali folktale and then find a way to plant vampires into this world. That’s what a pitch of Lokah must have sounded like when they started out five years ago. Yet a few months after its release, even this far-fetched idea sounds just about right, as if our industries were always ready for such a film. The result too was just as obvious. Lokah now stands as the highest-grossing female-led Indian movie of all time and the highest-grossing Malayalam movie ever. Dominic Arun also built for himself a robust cinematic universe with the promise of at least two more films; one starring Tovino Thomas and the other starring Dulquer Salmaan. Mammootty too seems keen to reprise his role as Mothoon. 

Homebound

Language: Hindi

Director: Neeraj Ghaywan

Arguably the finest Hindi film of the year, Homebound is personal, political, melancholic and hopeful all at once. The film skilfully channels a Basharat Peer essay about two friends during India’s migrant exodus in the lockdown to diagnose an entire country. It expands the language of adaptation through the well-acted story of a Dalit and Muslim character searching for belonging in an age of bigotry, faith-baiting and erasure. The merit of the film is that it's more about what is right and wrong, not left and right: pro-humanity more than anti-establishment. The empathy for India bleeds through every scene and slow-burning tragedy: a rarity at a time when most movies are dictated by their commentary and provocations.

Dragon

Language: Tamil

Director: Ashwath Marimuthu

Right from its inventive, hilarious marketing campaign that made it appear like a Don (2022) redux to the fact that filmmaker Ashwath Marimuthu and lead star Pradeep Ranganathan were former college mates and friends in real life, Dragon seemed destined for something special. After holding its cards a little too close to its chest in the first half, the coming-of-age comedy hits you with a wallop of heart and emotion — curveballs, redemption arcs, laughs and tears all coming together in sync. Adding to the film’s charm is a pitch-perfect supporting cast (George Maryan, Mysskin and YouTuber Harshath especially stand out) — not since Nanban and VIP have engineering graduates across Tamil Nadu resonated with a film more.

Su From So

Language: Kannada

Director: JP Thuminad

The residents of a sleepy town in coastal Karnataka are jolted awake by a tragicomic incident one eerie night. This is one way to abridge the essence of filmmaker JP Thuminad’s hilarious Kannada release, Su From So. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say the same about the triumphant consequences of the film: a kind of irresistible success that the Kannada film fully deserves. Su From So finds a place to tell us meaningful and mindful stories about the actions of brash men and their impact on women. JP Thuminad beautifully lays out the differences between the men and women in the village, sometimes laying bare the privilege that the former so shamelessly enjoy. The tone never shifts too much, managing to move us without getting clammy (the track with Bhanu does a dance between horror and drama, moving us to bits). And it does so with a balance that’s incredibly tough to crack in a genre like social horror.

Eko

Language: Mayalam

Director: Dinjith Ayyathan

Dinjith Ayyathan and Bahul Ramesh’s second collaboration is what is now being called the final part of Bahul’s compelling Animal Trilogy. Yet this third film also remains the most puzzling and complex in the way it is structured. Unlike the elements we see in most thrillers, Eko is better understood when you try to look at it as a moody novella. Every line requires multiple readings; every character gets a complete moral arc. More than worrying about what’s going to happen next, we’re just happy to be where are as we scratch our heads to figure who can be trusted and who cannot be, as Mlathi Chettathi (Biana Momin) tries to stay afloat in her hilltop hellhole. 

Ponman

Language: Malayalam

Director: Jothish Shankar

One of the year’s most fascinating emotional dramas works just as well as a layered, compelling character study. The character in question is PP Ajesh (Basil Joseph), based on a real-life jeweller the world is searching for even till today. Basil does an incredible job finding the madness within this ordinary man—in what has become the monologue of the year, we see a loser transform into a beast after what appears to be a beating of life’s hard knocks. Seamlessly, the film transforms from a dark comedy into a riveting David versus Goliath battle as the measly Ajesh takes on Mariano (Sajin Gopu), a giant in all respects as he fights tooth and nail to maintain the last ounce of dignity and self-respect he must preserve.  

Saiyaara

Language: Hindi

Director: Mohit Suri

Ahaan Panday and Aneet Padda in a still from 'Saiyaara'

Saiyaara happened to us while we were busy making action-and-historical-sized plans. This addictive marriage between old-school YRF emotions and modern Mohit Suri musicality reflects the love story between its two young protagonists: Aneet Padda’s Vaani is the traditional soul and Ahaan Panday’s Krish is the tortured voice. Together, they seem to have satiated the country's longing for go-for-broke and fools-rush-in romance, a genre that's all but extinct after the advent of social media and keypad attachments. While most Bollywood blockbusters piggyback on trends and popular sentiment, this one reclaimed the headiness of what is possible.

Kalamkaval

Language: Malayalam

Director: Jithin K Jose

In many ways, Jithin K Jose’s Kalamkaval can be described as the first legit serial killer thriller in all of Malayalam cinema. There’s no attempt to pick a moral side, nor is there an effort to humanise Mammootty’s SI Stanley Das. He kills as many as 31 women through the length of the film and the film doesn’t want to justify why he is who he is. The incredibly well-edited montage, in which Stanley goes from one hapless victim to another, is filmmaking gold, aided just as effortlessly by a brutal Mammootty performance the likes of which we have never seen before. 

The Girlfriend

Language: Telugu

Director: Rahul Ravindran

Rahul Ravindran and Rashmika Mandanna's The Girlfriend pulled off quite arguably the unthinkable. Bhooma, a woman written by a man, not only found intimate resonance among several women navigating abusive relationships, but also allowed different sides of them to just exist in a film, warts and all. It shows us pieces of truth scattered in the middle of various distractions. In the middle of all the buzzy moments of young love (like the intimacy of watching a movie or sharing lunch), if we look closely, we see the ugly truths, perhaps reflecting the truth many of us have witnessed in relationships. But the filmmaker urges us to pick up these pieces for ourselves, rather than forcing them on us. This simmering, introspective nature of The Girlfriend is one of the many reasons the Telugu film is compelling.

Sabar Bonda

Language: Marathi

Director: Rohan Kanawade

A still from 'Sabar Bonda'

Rohan Kanawade’s Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) is a film that lets grief do the talking, then listens closely to what desire says in its wake. Set during the ten-day mourning period of a deceased father, it follows Anand (Bhushaan Manoj), a Mumbai call-centre worker, as he returns to his village and drifts back into the orbit of Balya (Suraaj Suman), a childhood friend whose presence feels familiar and newly electric. What unfolds is a queer love story hidden in plain sight — built out of routine gestures: shared walks, borrowed shampoo, glances that safely pass as male camaraderie. Kanawade’s great achievement is indirectness. Sexuality is never named, only negotiated through euphemism, ritual and food, while silence becomes an ethical choice rather than a failure of courage. Shot without background music, the film trusts ambient sound and performance to carry its ache. Its most radical tenderness lies in Anand’s bond with his mother, whose pragmatic, unschooled empathy redefines allyship in cinema. In resisting melodrama and metaphor, Sabar Bonda earns its place among 2025’s best — a love story content to exist, thorny-sweet, in plain sight.

Jugnuma

Language: Hindi

Director: Raam Reddy

For a certain kind of Indian movie-goer (a thinning breed), Jugnuma was, in many ways, the unmissable theatrical film of 2025. Director Raam Reddy drew on his childhood memories to conjure this visually ravishing, magic realist tale set in a Himalayan estate in the 1980s. From its opening shot—a long, unbroken take of Dev (Manoj Bajpayee) starting his day, its grainy ordinariness transformed into the sublime as he literally takes wings—the film is bathed in a kind of virginal awe. Shot on 16mm celluloid, Sunil Borkar’s frames are wondrous and aching: it’s like someone stuck a movie camera inside a lost family picturebook and, through some unseen alchemy, nudged them to life. In a year of unrelenting ugliness on screen, Jugnuma throbbed with beauty and light.

Bison

Language: Tamil

Director: Mari Selvaraj

Held afloat by an imperious Pasupathy performance and Dhruv Vikram in his comeback, Mari Selvaraj's Bison is a riveting sporting drama set against the backdrop of caste-based oppression and violence. While not quite as hard-hitting as Selvaraj's previous works, Bison still hit the necessary rousing highs while following a classic template. Ameer and Lal rounded off an able supporting cast that carried the narrative whenever it threatened to get a bit too monotonous, and Nivas K. Prasanna's stunning background score did the rest.

Kantara: Chapter 1

Language: Kannada

Director: Rishab Shetty

Rishab Shetty’s Kantara: Chapter 1 performs a delicate dance between enchantment and realism. The prequel to the 2022 Kannada film grounds its roots in the Tulu traditions of coastal Karnataka but delivers the message with a spectacle on screen — through its visuals, sound, and intricate plotting. The prequel has a lot to say about many things. Its purview doesn’t just involve a land conflict or a resistance movement, but concepts like slavery, untouchability, and a touch of occultism. Even if the film's focus isn't as singular as the original, it pulls us in with its craft. Rishab Shetty's dazzling take on the Bhoota Kola tradition manages to grab us with ambition and abandon, and leaves us hungry for seconds.

Alappuzha Gymkhana

Language: Malayalam

Director: Khalid Rahman

With this film, Khalid Rahman seems to have reinvented or at least subverted every single expectation one would have from the triumphant sports drama. Instead of a story of hope, he infuses his sports film with a bunch of the most lovable losers. They have nothing to prove, nor do they want to change the world with their boxing skills. All they want to do is just the bare minimum to get into a college with a sports quota, that too just because they’ve heard that the girls are prettiest there. This loser-core comedy is built around a series of terribly funny losses and a motivational protagonist who has almost nothing going for them. It dumps the structures of a sports drama for something that feels way more ambitious—kickass vibes!