🏝️ Islands (2025): A Sunlit Paradise with a Hitchcockian Shadow — Cast, Plot, Trailer, Release Date & Where to Watch

Islands (2025): A Sunlit Paradise with a Hitchcockian Shadow 🏖️🕵️‍♂️

If you love thrillers that blend beauty with danger, Islands will draw you in like a riptide. Directed by Jan-Ole Gerster, this sun-soaked yet sinister drama takes place in the volcanic landscapes of Fuerteventura, where paradise hides unsettling secrets. Premiering at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival, it now heads to UK & Ireland cinemas on September 12 before streaming on BFI Player from October 27.

🌞 A Paradise for Tourists, a Prison for Tom

Once a rising tennis star, Tom (played by Sam Riley) now spends his days rallying balls with hotel guests and drowning his nights in alcohol and fleeting flings. To the tourists, he’s living the dream—a life of endless sun and sea. But to Tom, it’s a slow, spiraling purgatory.

Everything shifts when Anne (Stacy Martin) and Dave (Jack Farthing) arrive—a charming English couple whose presence awakens something in Tom. But what begins as idle intrigue soon descends into a dark chain of events that will leave someone missing, and everyone changed.

🎥 A Thriller with Noir DNA

Described as “a scorching, sun-frazzled Hitchcockian delight” by Nick Howells of The London Standard, Islands channels the psychological tension of Alfred Hitchcock and the moral ambiguity of Patricia Highsmith. Gerster’s direction, paired with Juan C. Sarmiento Grisales’s lush cinematography, captures the uneasy contrast between the island’s sunlit beauty and the shadowy motives lurking beneath.

🌀 Heat, Desire, and Danger

What makes Islands stand out is its refusal to be a straightforward whodunit. It’s a character study wrapped in mystery—about the lies we tell ourselves, the dangerous allure of strangers, and the fact that, sometimes, hell looks like paradise.

📅 UK & Ireland Release Date: September 12, 2025

💻 Streaming on: BFI Player, October 27, 2025

🌍 World Premiere: 16 February 2025, Berlinale Special

🎭 Genre: Thriller / Drama / Mystery

⏳ Runtime: 120 minutes