Film and TV to look out for in 2025
Our critic selects the most anticipated feature films and TV shows to watch this year
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Looking ahead to 2025, there are already some gems glittering on the horizon. Of course, predicting the best upcoming films and TV shows of the year is no easy task — this list may not age with a 100% success rate — but here are some of the titles that I am most excitedly counting down the days for.
Eagles of the Republic
Cannes and Sundance winner Tarik Saleh returns in 2025 with the conclusion of his Cairo Trilogy, the generational family saga set in Egypt, based on the novels of the Nobel-prize-winning author Naguib Mahfouz. The grandly titled Eagles of the Republic stars his frequent collaborator Fares Fares as George El-Nabawi, the biggest movie star in Egypt who is pressured into leading a film commissioned by the state. Unfortunately for him, that connection to the highest echelons of power proves dangerous and is further complicated by an ill-timed romance with the wife of the general who has funded the film.
Saleh’s work is always elegantly made and often pulpy fun. Eagles of the Republic is even more intriguing as he’s secured a near-unprecedented budget for Egyptian cinema, making it one of the most expensive Arabic-language films ever made. Hopefully that’ll make it an unprecedented success, too.
Tu ne feras point d’image
Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania is one of the great wonders of North African cinema. Her previous film The Man Who Sold His Skin — the title being a very literal description of the plot of the Oscar-nominated art-world satire — was followed by the genre-bending documentary Four Daughters, in which a Tunisian family confronts re-enactments of scenes that occurred just before two daughters left to join Isis. Very little is known about what her latest piece will involve, but the title is derived from Exodus 20:4-5 and translates as: “You shall not make unto thee any graven image.”
#1 Happy Family USA (TV)
Another upcoming work with a title that simply slaps is #1 Happy Family USA, from the writer/director/actor/comedian Ramy Youssef, whose semi-autobiographical sitcom Ramy reshaped the portrayal of Muslim Americans on our screens. His newest show changes form to animation, but stays within similar themes. His collaboration with the TV branch of the beloved production company A24 bodes well, as the cast includes Alia Shawkat, Salma Hindy and Mandy Moore. Youssef has generated such an immense amount of goodwill around his work that anything he turns his hand to will be hotly anticipated.
Rosebush Pruning
Brazilian Algerian director Karim Aïnouz is best known for his adaptation of Martha Batalha’s novel The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão, which won Un Certain Regard at 2019’s Cannes Film Festival. He returns in 2025 with a starry thriller intriguingly titled Rosebush Pruning. It has an unusually high-profile cast for Aïnouz, with Riley Keough, Elle Fanning, Jamie Bell and Pamela Anderson. Plot details are thin on the ground and all we know so far is that it features a family living on a country estate and struggling with genetic diseases. If his previous work is anything to go by, what lies ahead will be an artfully composed wild ride.
Famous
I’ve been a fan of Sam Esmail for the past decade, since he created the series Mr Robot, starring Rami Malek. And I found few things as deeply disturbing as his recent feature Leave the World Behind, adapted from the novel by Bangladeshi American author Rumaan Alam. There are plenty of scenes in that film about a pre-planned global apocalypse that are horrifying in themselves, but the fact that it was produced by Barack Obama made it seem like a prophecy based on insider information.
Esmail’s latest work as a producer, at least from what we know as yet, indicates an intriguing and disquieting darkness that has become his signature. Famous, based on the novel by Blake Crouch, stars Zac Efron in dual roles as a celebrity actor and his overzealous fan.
Down Cemetery Road (TV series)
People familiar with my work will know that I seize any opportunity to rhapsodise at length about the talents of Adeel Akhtar. I’ve adored him since Four Lions and he’s rarely disappointed since, being both chameleonic and wholly himself in every role. Down Cemetery Road is an exhilarating prospect as he’s collaborating with the wonderful Dame Emma Thompson, Ruth Wilson and Tom Riley.
Akhtar would give any TV series great prestige, but it is truly warming to see him cast in an ensemble of actors who match his talents. After so many years of lockdowns and strikes hobbling the film and television industry, there’s nothing more exciting than seeing projects like these and thinking we are finally, maybe, back to normal.
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