Director: Jan Ole Gerster
Cast: Sam Riley, Stacy Martin, Jack Farthing, Dylan Torrell, Agnes Lindström Bolmgren
Islands is a 2025 German-British crime drama thriller directed by Jan Ole Gerster, starring Sam Riley as a former professional tennis player who finds himself stranded in more ways than one on a sun-drenched holiday island, coaching hotel guests while his own life quietly unravels around him.
What is Islands about?
Tom was once a respected name on the professional tennis circuit. Now he fills his days at a resort hotel on a Mediterranean island, sending balls across a net to vacationing strangers who will forget him by checkout. The rhythm of his diminished life runs on routine and numbness — until an unexpected encounter with a particular tourist family cracks something open. What begins as a mundane holiday-season coincidence gradually pulls Tom into a situation that forces him to reckon with choices long deferred. Gerster keeps the tension low and slow, letting small gestures and glances do the heavy lifting as the island's picture-postcard surface gives way to something far more unsettling underneath.
Cast & crew
Sam Riley, best known for his magnetic screen presence in British and international productions, anchors the film as Tom, carrying the weight of a character who communicates as much through stillness as through words. Stacy Martin and Jack Farthing round out the central ensemble, while the multilingual supporting cast — including Agnes Lindström Bolmgren, Bruna Cusí, and Pep Ambròs — reflects the genuinely European texture of the story's island setting. Director Jan Ole Gerster previously earned international attention with Oh Boy.
Context & significance
For Persian-speaking viewers abroad who know what it means to rebuild identity far from home, Islands speaks in a language that cuts close. The figure of a once-prominent professional quietly diminished in a foreign place — coaching rather than competing, observing rather than participating — carries real emotional weight for diaspora audiences who have navigated reinvention in unfamiliar surroundings. The film's European crime-drama register is deliberate and unhurried, closer to literary fiction than action thriller. Islands is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, so viewers can engage with the story in full comfort regardless of their language preference.
Where & how to watch
Islands is available on K-Time with Persian DUB and Persian subtitles. Watch on the web, your TV, or your phone — no VPN needed, no geo-blocking, no extra download required. Start watching anytime and cancel anytime.