What To Watch
Hidden Gems of 2025: Movies and Shows You Might’ve Missed
Apocalypse in the Tropics, Left-Handed Girl, North of North, and more.
By Ashley Lee
Dec. 11, 2025
Best Movies and Shows You Might’ve Missed in 2025 - Netflix Tudum
This past year has been an exceptional one when it comes to movies and television. The animated film KPop Demon Hunters got global audiences singing and dancing to “Golden” on repeat. The limited series Adolescence had viewers — and Emmy Award voters — hooked on its twists and turns. And the first volume of Stranger Things’s final season earned the biggest premiere week for an English-language show in the history of Netflix.
With so many popular titles, it’s easy to miss the gems that have cultivated niche followings and collected critical acclaim. These are movies and shows from around the world and across genres — they all tell engrossing stories, feature standout performances, and have emotional impacts.
End your year with these 15 hidden gems of 2025, and discover what you’ve been missing.
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Apocalypse in the Tropics
This fascinating documentary traces the rapid rise of religious influence in Brazilian politics. It challenged the foundations of the nation’s democracy and mirrored trends seen in other countries. The film includes interviews with elected officials, spiritual leaders, and everyday citizens, and it builds to the 2018 presidential election of Jair Bolsonaro. Petra Costa, who previously earned an Academy Award nomination for her 2019 film The Edge of Democracy, directs and narrates the film.
Asura
On a winter day in Tokyo, the four Takezawa sisters meet to discuss their father, who they discover has been having a lengthy affair that’s resulted in a child out of wedlock. The siblings promise each other they’ll hide the misdeeds from their mother, but keeping these secrets upends their lives. The seven-episode Japanese drama from Hirokazu Kore-eda (The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House) is a modern take on Kuniko Mukōda’s 1970s miniseries Like Asura (Ashura no Gotoku), itself based on the novel of the same name.
Boots
Surviving boot camp is one thing, but doing so when being gay in the military was illegal is another. This life-affirming dramedy follows closeted Cameron (Miles Heizer) and his best friend, Ray (Liam Oh), as they get thrown into the tough and unpredictable world of the 1990s US Marine Corps. They join a diverse group of recruits, and together, they discover their true selves while navigating the intense environment. The eight-episode series is inspired by former US Marine Greg Cope White’s memoir, The Pink Marine.
Dept. Q
Matthew Goode stars in this British crime drama series as Carl Morck, a crabby English detective chief inspector who works in Edinburgh, Scotland. He’s a curmudgeon for a reason: After an on-duty shooting leaves his partner paralyzed and another police officer dead, he’s reassigned to Dept. Q, where he investigates cold cases alongside a motley crew of misfits. An adaptation of the novels by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen, the already renewed series hails from Scott Frank, the creator of The Queen’s Gambit and Godless.
FOREVER
You never forget your first love. This eight-episode romance follows teen athletes Keisha (Lovie Simone) and Justin (Michael Cooper Jr.) as they fall hard for each other and navigate the awkward and moving journey of first-time relationship milestones. The critically acclaimed adaptation of the Judy Blume book is the brainchild of Mara Brock Akil, who also created Girlfriends and The Game. Regina King directs the first episode of the show, which is set in 2018 Los Angeles and has already been renewed for a second season.
Karma
Lee Hee-joon (A Killer Paradox) plays a man who’s down on his luck and hatches an extreme scheme in order to quickly repay a dangerous loan shark. But the plan goes awry, creating a ripple effect for him and five other seemingly innocent people. This slow-burn South Korean series tracks how these six lives become intertwined in a tangled web of misdeeds. The six-installment thriller is based on the popular webtoon of the same name by Choi See-hun.
Left-Handed Girl
This intimate intergenerational drama centers on a single mother and her daughters who, after several years in the countryside, move to Taipei to open a night market stall. As they adapt to their new environment, they’re all thrown off by a comment from their traditional grandfather. He forbids his youngest granddaughter from using her “devil hand” — this unspools generations of family secrets. Shih-Ching Tsou co-wrote, produced, and directed the movie, which is based on her childhood and stories from friends and family.
Long Story Short
Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the creator of the acclaimed tragicomedy series BoJack Horseman, has done it again with this already renewed animated title, which follows a Jewish American family over various periods of their lives. The episodes jump back and forth through the years, offering relatable moments of triumph, disappointment, joy, and compromise. The central Schwooper family is voiced by a star-studded cast, including Ben Feldman, Abbi Jacobson, Max Greenfield, Angelique Cabral, Nicole Byer, Lisa Edelstein, and Paul Reiser.
Night Always Comes
In this psychological thriller, Vanessa Kirby plays Lynette, a woman who’s been diligently saving up to buy the home she rents in Portland, Oregon, only to find that the $25,000 she’s amassed has been spent by her mother. The film traces Lynette’s moves over the course of one evening, as she desperately tries to secure the funds and save her family from eviction before the clock runs out. The adaptation of Willy Vlautin’s 2021 novel also features Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stephan James, Randall Park, Michael Kelly, and Julia Fox.
North of North
Who knew that the first major television series of its size to film in the Arctic could also be the most heartwarming? This Canadian sitcom is led by Anna Lambe as Siaja, a young Inuk woman who, after a sudden and very public exit from her marriage to the town’s local darling, tries to reinvent herself. Come for the self-discovery storylines and the close-knit community vibes, stay for the breathtaking landscapes and authentic representation of Inuit culture. Plus, Season 2 is already on the way.
NOUVELLE VAGUE
In 1960, Jean-Luc Godard debuted his movie Breathless, which is now considered the starting point of the French New Wave art film movement. Nouvelle Vague reimagines the making of that revolutionary film, with Guillaume Marbeck portraying Godard and Aubry Dullin and Zoey Deutch playing Breathless actors Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, respectively. A love letter to creative imagination and experimentation from Richard Linklater (Hit Man) the black-and-white title also includes portrayals of influential film figures like François Truffaut, Agnès Varda, and Éric Rohmer.
SAKAMOTO DAYS
Based on the popular Japanese manga written and illustrated by Yuto Suzuki, this action-packed anime title centers on Taro Sakamoto, the legendary hit man who falls in love with a convenience store clerk. He retires in order to get married, raise a daughter, and live in a quiet town. When former enemies seek him out for revenge, he must return to the assassin world and revive his extraordinary combat skills to fight off impending threats, protect his family, and maintain his “ordinary” facade.
Secrets We Keep
This Danish drama takes place in an affluent suburb of Copenhagen, where just about every family has an au pair from the Philippines. When a neighboring family’s au pair suddenly vanishes, one woman named Cecilie (Marie Bach Hansen) is determined to find out who’s responsible. But as she delves deeper into the mystery, she starts to suspect that there may be more people from her inner circle involved than she wants to believe. The six twisty episodes of the Nordic limited series are directed by Per Fly (Borgen).
The Waterfront
The flawed but fortunate Buckley family has a thriving fishing empire that dominates everything in their North Carolina town, from the angling industry to the restaurant scene. But the future of their lucrative business is put in jeopardy due to various family members’ tumultuous relationships, health complications, and questionable decisions. Holt McCallany, Maria Bello, and Melissa Benoist play the central kin in the soapy eight-episode drama, which is inspired by the real-life family history of creator Kevin Williamson (Dawson’s Creek).
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
This Academy Award–nominated adventure is the sixth installment in the Wallace & Gromit series and the second feature-length film with the beloved stop-motion duo. This time, the inventor and his loyal pooch get into trouble when a new creation — Norbot, a “smart” gnome designed to help with gardening tasks — seems to develop a mind of its own. Wallace and Gromit must then face Feathers McGraw, the villain from the 1993 short film The Wrong Trousers who also made a brief cameo in Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget.
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