Riz Ahmed-led political thriller Relay to hit Indian cinemas on August 22, 2025

PVR INOX Pictures is proud to bring to Indian cinemas Relay on 22nd August 2025, the gripping and timely new thriller directed by Oscar Award winner David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water), starring Academy Award winner Riz Ahmed, Lily James, and Sam Worthington. Premiered as a Special Presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival 2024, Relay is a taut, high-concept political thriller that pulses with urgency in our era of surveillance, secrets, and suppression.

The synopsis of the film reads: In Relay, Riz Ahmed plays a world-class “fixer” who specializes in brokering lucrative payoffs between corrupt corporations and the individuals who threaten their ruin. He keeps his identity a secret through meticulous planning and always follows an exacting set of rules. But when a message arrives one day from a potential client (Lily James) needing his protection just to stay alive, the rules quickly start to change.

Speaking about the film, Director David Mackenzie said, “Relay is a tense New York thriller which is very much of the now but has echoes of the great soulful paranoid thrillers of the '70s. It's a film about an outsider trying to do the right thing, it's about loneliness and the raw unsung bravery of whistleblowers who have to stand up to the powerful and dangerous forces trying to prevent them from speaking out. In our case it is entirely fictional but I hope it speaks to broader truths in a world where the control of information and 'the narrative' is one of the key societal battlegrounds of our times. It’s a story about the vulnerability of someone with no safety net, fighting a system rigged self-protectively against anything that opposes it.”

The film features a restrained and layered performance from Riz Ahmed, who embodies a man ruled by his own painful past and the systems he once tried to confront. Lily James brings both vulnerability and defiance to Sarah, whose moral awakening puts her on a collision course with powerful enemies. Sam Worthington plays a quietly menacing antagonist who hides brutality beneath corporate polish.

A thriller with razor-sharp tension, Relay is a haunting meditation on secrecy, survival, and the deeply human cost of doing what’s right.

Also Read: Riz Ahmed and Lily James to star in David MacKenzie’s thriller Relay