A popular saying—there is no growth without change—didn’t quite hold true for Indian mainstream cinema in 2025. The dominant trend of the past—macho narratives—continued to hold sway as the box office returns multiplied manifold. Aditya Dhar’s spy thriller Dhurandhar and Laxman Utekar’s period piece Chhaava in Hindi, Rishab Shetty’s mythological Kantara: Chapter 1 in Kannada, and Lokesh Kanagaraj’s actioner Coolie in Tamil topped the charts, disrupted by an occasional Mohit Suri musical romance Saiyaara or R S Prasanna’s socially conscious sports drama Sitaare Zameen Par.
The male skew made inroads in the purportedly gender-balanced streaming world as well. Mumbai-based insights consulting firm Ormax Media’s analysis of 338 Hindi fiction originals on OTT since 2022 showed that the male protagonists’ stories were 3.5 times more than those centred on female characters in 2025.
Not quite shocking for the entertainment industry where all that matters is moolah, with 2025 looking set to emerge as the highest grossing year of all time. The biggest contributor to it has expectedly been Dhurandhar having already amassed over Rs 1,000 crore worldwide.
Our popular culture is who we are. It may not change the state of the nation but does reflect the zeitgeist, in this case the zealously supremacist mood of the current time. Its most seductively combative and violent assertion so far has come from Dhar, whose rise and rise to becoming the flag-bearer of the majoritarian aesthetics could well be seen coming in his debut feature Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019).
Horror was another common thread in the top hits across languages—Aditya Sarpotdar’s vampire saga Thamma in Hindi, Hrishikesh Gupte’s psychological chiller Jarann in Marathi with a terrific performance from Amruta Subhash as a woman unable to process loss and the childhood trauma of having been subjected to witchcraft, Krishnadev Yagnik’s Vash Level 2, the sequel to his critically acclaimed Vash (2023) in Gujarati and the best of the scarefests, Rahul Sadasivan’s Malayalam language Dies Irae, third in his exploration of psychological and folk horror, after Bhoothakaalam (2022) and Bramayugam (2024).
Myths, legends, lores and history made for the other stuff of success. Ashwin Kumar’s animated epic Mahavatar Narsimha proved to be a huge pan-Indian hit in all the versions—Hindi, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. Despite a slow start, Ankit Sakhiya’s devotional film Laalo—Krishna Sada Sahaayate grew steadily to become the highest-grossing Gujarati film of all time in a landmark year for the state’s cinema.
Big grew bigger for Malayalam cinema as well with Lokah Chapter 1: Chandra and L2: Empuraan proving to be its highest and the second-highest grossers of all time. Refreshingly it’s the one industry where the top earner is a female led “superhero” film.
The world loved Saiyaara but the only thing I remember of the movie is the daft psychiatrist who doesn’t have the common sense to not tell an already forgetful girl that she has Alzheimer’s. Doesn’t such a serious diagnosis merit a word with her parents who, in turn, appear to have no worries about their daughter, sending her off all by herself to collect her MRI reports. It’s music topped the charts but I remember the gorgeous song picturisation in Anurag Basu’s Metro… In Dino instead, specially the pulsating Ishq Ya Tharak, the Amitabh Bhattacharya-Pritam composition sung by Aditya Roy Kapur, Nikhita Gandhi, Antara Mitra and Shashwat Singh. I enjoyed the masala Mother India-esque Nischaanchi by Anurag Kashyap while the world thought nothing of it.
Quite like 2024, the best of 2025 were the small, women-centric films in the independent circuit, directed by women. A spiritual successor to Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, Anuparna Roy’s debut feature Songs of Forgotten Trees (Hindi), a tender exploration of the evolving and transformative friendship between two migrant women in Mumbai, won the best director award in the Orizzonti (Horizons) section of the Venice International Film Festival.
At the same festival, Nidhi Saxena’s second feature Secret Of A Mountain Serpent, a lyrical exploration of female desire, opened in the Biennale College Cinema programme. Having graduated in painting and sculpture, Saxena’s cinema is impeccably crafted, visually beguiling, challenging in its experimental and deeply feminist story-telling.
Directors Tanushree Das and Saumyananda Sahi’s Baksho Bondi (Hindi and Bengali), backed by a record 23 producers, centred on a resilient woman trying to hold her family together in the face of hardships. It had its world premiere in Berlin.
Independent filmmaker from Sikkim, Tribeny Rai’s Nepali language debut feature Shape of Momo, with three generations of women and their negotiations with gender expectations and family traditions at its fulcrum, opened in Busan, bagging the Taipei Film Commission Award and the Songwon Vision Award.
A beauty parlour became the playground for women’s inner turmoil and struggles in Sivaranjini J’s Malayalam language debut feature, Victoria. Varsha Bharath’s Tamil debut Bad Girl, driven with a propulsive, no holds barred rebellious spirit subverted the chick flick conventions.
Women brought in a breath of fresh air to mainstream cinema as well. Anusha Rizvi’s delightful ensemble of seven fabulous actresses portrayed two generations Muslim women, spotlighting the modern in the traditional and the traditional in the modern in The Great Shamsuddin Family.
In her feature film debut, Dhadak 2, Shazia Iqbal reinterpreted Mari Selvaraj’s much acclaimed Tamil film, Pariyerum Perumal, as a love story cutting across caste divides seen from the gender lens. For an industry notorious for turning a blind eye to caste politics, it was backed by the A-lister Dharma Productions that also put its might behind Neeraj Ghaywan’s heart-tugging gaze at the marginalised and the minorities in Homebound. From premiering at Cannes Film Festival to being shortlisted for the Best International Feature Film Oscar, it came a long way in a short time.
Also trying to take a shot at the Oscars, in the Best Original Screenplay category is Aranya Sahay’s Humans in the Loop that featured in my best of 2024.
Meanwhile, Mari Selvaraj’s Bison Kaalamaadan hit hard with its bristling anger and defiance against caste hierarchies and the inspiring triumph of its protagonist in kabaddi in the face of prejudices. It also underscored the fundamental difference in Tamil cinema’s exploration of caste issues as opposed to Bollywood. While the former is of, by and for the oppressed, the latter is still targeted at the privileged, be it to sensitise or to implicate them in caste-based atrocities.
In Telugu cinema Rahul Ravindran proved to be a feminist ally with his The Girlfriend bringing to the fore the relatable horrors of being trapped in a toxic relationship.
The overly male universe itself became a mode to take down masculinity in a delightful way in J Thuminad’s debut Kannada film Su From So and Senna Hegde’s Malayalam film Avihitham.
The year started auspiciously with Rohan Kanawade’s simple, sensitive and humane take on loss and queer longing in rural Maharashtra, Sabar Bonda, winning the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic at the Sundance Film Festival. As the year comes to a close, after a limited release in theatres, it hasn’t been able to bag a spot on any of the streaming platforms.
Hopefully it will find a home soon. As should Meghalaya filmmaker Pradip Kurbah’s Ha Lyngkha Bneng (Khasi, The Elysian Field), a beautiful, immersive piece on life, death, human isolation, community and belonging that won Best Film, Best Director and the NETPAC awards at the Moscow International Film Festival and Sanju Surendran’s Khidki Gaav (If on a Winter’s Night), a moody evocation of the South Delhi neighbourhood in smoggy winter and the tenuous, alienating life of a migrant Malayali couple that won the Hylife Vision award in Busan.
