Director: Weston Razooli
Shot on grainy 16mm film in the mountains of Utah, Riddle of Fire (2024) turns a simple errand into a scrappy backyard fairy tale about three kids who refuse to give up.
What is Riddle of Fire about?
Hesper, Alice, and Jodie have just pulled off a heist: they stole a brand-new video game console. The catch is that their mother controls the household wifi password, and she won't hand it over until the trio bakes her a blueberry pie. What should be a quick bike ride to the store spirals into a strange, sprawling quest once the kids discover every pie in town has been bought out. Chasing down the last blueberries leads them into the path of a gang of scruffy poachers, a huntsman with his own agenda, and a self-declared witch guarding a stash of eggs deep in the woods. Along the way they pick up an unlikely ally, a local girl who knows the forest better than any adult, and the group's loyalty to one another is tested by mud, dares, and a BB gun that keeps changing hands. Writer-director Weston Razooli builds the whole film around a child's sense of scale, where a locked shed or an angry landowner feels as dangerous as any movie villain, and the analog visual texture gives the whole adventure a lived-in, homemade warmth rarely seen in modern family films.
Cast & crew
Charlie Stover, Skyler Peters, and Phoebe Ferro anchor the film as the three siblings, with naturalistic, unscripted-feeling performances that carry most of the runtime. Lio Tipton plays their mother, and Charles Halford appears as one of the film's more menacing adult figures.
Context & significance
Director Weston Razooli shot the film independently over several years with a small crew and mostly non-professional child actors, favoring practical effects and real locations over digital polish. The result premiered at Sundance in 2023 before a wider 2024 release, picking up a cult following for its handmade, VHS-era look.
Where & how to watch
Riddle of Fire is available to stream on K-Time, with a Farsi-dubbed version and Persian subtitles for viewers who prefer to follow along in their own language. A free K-Time account is all that's needed to log in and start watching, and the interface itself is built with a Farsi-first experience for the diaspora audience.