Thelma takes the action-thriller formula and flips it, putting a feisty grandmother at the centre of a high-stakes mission. After falling victim to a phone scam claiming her grandson is in danger, she sets out to fight back.
The comedy is streaming on Showmax from today (22 September 2025). It premiered on M-Net (DStv Channel 1010) last night (21 September).
Thelma earned 95-year-old star June Squibb the best actress in an action movie award at the 2025 Critics Choice Super Awards, among other accolades. This was the first leading film role of her 70-year career, which includes a supporting actress Oscar nomination for Nebraska. Squibb will star in Scarlett Johansson’s upcoming directorial debut, Eleanor The Great.
Thelma’s partner in crime is played by Richard Roundtree in his final screen performance; he passed away in 2023 and had appeared in Shaft. Together on a motorised scooter, the pair take on obstacles with determination, turning an ordinary con into an extraordinary fightback.
The quest takes the grandmother across Los Angeles as she refuses to let the crime go unanswered. What begins as an attempt to recover what was stolen soon becomes a test of determination, as she proves she is far more capable than her family imagines.
Thelma is the feature directorial debut of Josh Margolin, who also wrote the screenplay. The movie is inspired by a real-life incident involving his own grandmother.
“My grandma refuses to die,” says Margolin in Thelma’s production notes. “She just turned 103 and has survived the Great Depression, WWII, the death of her husband, a double mastectomy, colon cancer, a valve replacement and an ongoing but allegedly benign brain tumour.
“So, when she got duped by phone scammers a few years ago (and nearly sent them thousands of dollars for my ‘bail’), it pierced my long-standing belief that she was somehow infallible, a belief that brought me some kind of undue comfort throughout my own anxious existence.
“The inevitability of losing her has become increasingly real to me, and so has her dogged persistence to hold on to her sense of self, as her body and mind stubbornly slow. I wrote Thelma from this place of reckoning.
“I wanted to explore her fight for what’s left of her autonomy just as I was beginning to consider mine. She has always been larger-than-life to me, and I felt compelled to dramatise her story with the trappings of a genre that captures her powerful spirit and celebrates her grit and tenacity – action.”
Margolin says Thelma is a twist on the classic one last job flick.
“As far as I’m concerned, watching my grandma get onto a high mattress is as thrilling and terrifying as Tom Cruise driving a motorcycle off a cliff. Just in a very different way,” he says. “The story is an epic journey on a granular scale because, for her, the little things present great dangers.
“I want the audience to feel these challenges viscerally, never making light of the strength it takes for her to move through the world. The film shrinks down the tropes of the action genre to a very human scale and uses them to explore ageing, fragility, and anxiety.
“I couldn’t imagine anyone doing this but June, who I feel so lucky to have gotten to work with. At 93 years old, she left it all on the field, bringing equal parts vulnerability and resilience (as well as doing the majority of her own stunts). Thelma centres and celebrates her as well as those who would see themselves reflected in a type of action hero we rarely see.”
Fred Hechinger, recognised for his work in The White Lotus, appears as Thelma’s grandson. The cast includes Parker Posey (Lost in Space), Clark Gregg (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Nicole Byer (Nailed It!), and Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange).