International Film and TV Breakouts of the Year: Owen Cooper, Lisa and More

Japanese filmmaker Fujimoto Akio broke decisively onto the international stage in 2025. His third feature, “Lost Land” (Harà Watan), premiered in the Horizons section of the Venice Film Festival, where it won the special jury prize, immediately putting him on the global radar. The film — shot entirely in the Rohingya language and centered on the lives of young Rohingya refugees — went on to secure the Golden Yusr for best feature at the Red Sea International Film Festival, confirming its cross-regional impact. Earlier works such as “Passage of Life” and “Along the Sea” had already attracted attention at major festivals, but “Lost Land” elevated Fujimoto from a programmer favorite to a filmmaker with genuine international traction.
Naman Ramachandran

Before “Adolescence,” nobody had seen Owen Cooper on screen. Quite literally. Netflix’s one-shot mini-series phenomenon — in which he played a teenage boy accused of murdering a classmate — didn’t simply mark his breakout moment, but was the youngster’s first professional acting role. Such was Cooper’s astonishing performance, applauded for its raw emotion and maturity, that few could believe it was his debut. The nine months since have been nothing short of life-changing for the teenager from the north English town of Warrington. “Adolescence’s” awards run is still ongoing, but he’s already become the youngest male actor to win a Primetime Emmy (he was just 15 at the time) and with the SAGs, Golden Globes and BAFTA TV Awards on the horizon, many more major honors are no doubt incoming. Thankfully, while Cooper is now working out how to juggle school work with awards ceremonies, fashion shows and all the other trappings of being arguably TV’s most talked-about newcomer of the year, his meteoric success doesn’t look like a flash-in-the-pan moment. Next up, he’s appearing in Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” as a young Heathcliff, while he was recently announced as part of the all-star cast for Tom Ford’s hotly-anticipated next feature. The future looks very, very bright.
Alex Ritman

As the formidable Germanic tribal noblewoman Thusnelda, Goursaud made an impression in Netflix German epic “Barbarians,” hacking her way through multiple body parts of any poor Roman soldier who crossed sword with her. It was really in 2025’s “Exterritorial,” however, that the German-French actor not only underscored her action moves in some brutal fight scenes but showed subtler acting and star power, playing ex-soldier Sara. The sole survivor of an ambush in Afghanistan, still suffering from PTSD, her young son vanishes in thin air from a playroom at the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt. Sara will do anything — and punch anyone — to get him back. Released April 30 to become Germany’s biggest hit ever on Netflix, scoring 91.7 million views, “Exterritorial” is also the biggest non-English non-franchise title from anywhere in the world for the U.S. streaming service this year.
John Hopewell

After gaining buzz with her directorial debut “Bonus Track” in 2023, Canadian director Jackman broke through this year with the indie fantasy “100 Nights of Hero.” The film’s impressive cast — including Emma Corrin, Maika Monroe, Nicholas Galitzine, Charli xcx, Richard E. Grant, Felicity Jones and Amir El-Masry — and dystopian take on Middle Eastern folklore propelled it to Venice Critics’ Week in September and as the closing film of the BFI London Film Festival the next month. Reviews praised Jackman’s distinctive world-building and voice, while nearly every actor involved gushed about the film’s collaborative set and boots-on-the-ground ethos. “100 Nights of Hero” is currently screening in U.S. theaters via IFC and will be debuting in U.K. cinemas in February.
Ellise Shafer

Ishaan Khatter’s international breakout has been years in the making, but it finally snapped into focus over the past year. After first drawing global attention with Mira Nair’s BBC/Netflix adaptation “A Suitable Boy” (2020), Khatter reached a wider mainstream audience with Netflix’s glossy murder mystery “The Perfect Couple” (2024) opposite Nicole Kidman, showcasing a fluency in English-language material that few South Asian actors manage so smoothly. He followed that in 2025 with Netflix India’s contemporary series “The Royals,” reinforcing his commercial pull at home, while Neeraj Ghaywan’s Cannes-bowed “Homebound” pushed him firmly back into prestige territory and landed on the Oscars best international feature shortlist. Comfortable toggling between streamer-friendly spectacle and festival-caliber drama, Khatter now looks less like a crossover experiment and more like a genuinely international leading man in the making.
NR

Joachim Trier helped turn Renate Reinsve into a major star (and a Palme d’Or winner) with “The Worst Person in the World,” and it looks like he’s doing something similar for fellow Norwegian Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas with his follow-up. “Sentimental Value,” about the fractured relationship between a famed director and his two estranged daughters, was a critical hit in Cannes and has comfortably set sail into awards season. But despite the presence of established names such Stellan Skarsgard, Elle Fanning and Reinsve, for many critics it was the quiet strength that Lilleaas offered in her supporting role that gave the film its most moving elements. The accolades have already begun piling up for the 36-year-old, with honors from the National Board of Review and Palm Springs Film Festival, plus a sizable haul of pending nominations (including from the Globes Globes). Awards pundits already have her down as a near-certainty for the Oscars.
AR

Lalisa Manobal, better known simply as Lisa, made one of the most high-profile crossovers of the year with her leap from global pop stardom to scripted television. The Blackpink superstar made her acting debut in HBO’s “The White Lotus,” joining the third season of Mike White’s satirical comedy-drama, which shifted the franchise’s focus to Thailand. Her role was small within the ensemble, prompting some fan disappointment over limited screen time, but it placed her inside one of television’s most scrutinized prestige series and offered a low-risk entry point into acting. Her casting broadened the show’s global reach and marked a notable step outside Hollywood’s usual casting playbook. Lisa is next set to appear opposite Don Lee in Netflix’s “Tygo,” a standalone film set within the “Extraction” action universe, cementing her move from music icon to emerging screen presence.
NR

Thanks largely to “Enola Holmes,” not to mention “Pistol,” “Disclaimer” and — going much further back — “Paddington 2,” Louis Partridge is hardly a newcomer. But 2025 definitely marked a turning point for the fast-rising British actor. “House of Guinness,” Steven Knight’s 19th-century cocktail of “Peaky Blinders” and “Succession” for Netflix, saw the 22-year-old take on one of his chunkiest roles to date as the real-life boss of the Irish brewing giant. Meanwhile, Noah Baumbach’s Venice-bowing Hollywood saga “Jay Kelly” added George Clooney to his growing list of co-stars. And while all this was going on, Partridge was mostly vaulting about the British countryside in a red army uniform, playing Jane Austen’s notorious knave George Wickham in “Pride & Prejudice” alongside Emma Corrin, Jack Lowden and Olivia Colman. The Netflix series is set to launch next year and will likely push his star wattage even higher.
AR

Can she do nothing wrong? In 2022, Pedro Almodóvar endorsed her first feature, “Lullaby,” calling it “undoubtedly the best debut in Spanish cinema for years.” Three years later, Basque writer-director Ruíz de Azúa has made good on that promise, scoring a remarkable double. In March, she scooped the biggest prize at Series Mania, Europe’s most important TV festival, for her first series “Querer.” And this September, she walked off with the top Golden Shell at San Sebastián for feature “Sundays.” Set in her native Basque Country, “Sundays,” a suspense drama portrait of failing family dynamics, has also achieved the holy grail of any feature these days selling on the open market: a powerful performance in its home territory, reaching around €4.0 million ($4.7 million) to date in Spain and rapid early major market sales accounting for half the world. Few European auteurs have emerged so fast.
JH

When “Sound of Falling” premiered in Cannes on May 14, 41-year-old Berliner Mascha Schilinksi became an instant sensation with her meditation on history, memory and inherited trauma that traces the lives of four generations of women across a century in a remote German farmhouse. Variety’s Guy Lodge hailed the movie as a “shattering” epic that sends its director “into the big leagues” thanks to an “astonishingly poised and ambitious second feature.” After scoring the jury prize in a tie at Cannes, “Sound of Falling” played at high-profile international events, including the New York Film Festival, and is Germany’s shortlisted Oscars contender in the best international feature category. Mubi is releasing the film in the U.S. in January. Meanwhile, Schilinski recently signed with CAA.
Nick Vivarelli

This year at Cannes, then under-the-radar director Francesco Sossai, 36, pulled Italy’s biggest cinematic coup by landing in the Un Certain Regard competition with his boozy road movie “The Last One for the Road.” Praised by Variety’s Tomris Laffly as a “pleasant Italian gem on drinking buddies, aging and wistful flavors of life” this fresh film — about two broke petty-criminals who pick up a young architecture student and embark on a journey filled with hangovers and philosophical conversations — subsequently traveled widely, including to the Toronto and New York Film Festivals. The low-budget “Last One for the Road” has also scored a relatively robust $1.5 million at the Italian box office and sold to a slew of territories via Paris-based sales company Lucky Number.
NV