Director: Robert Rippberger
Cast: Frankie Muniz, Violett Beane, Marcia Gay Harden, Taylor Gray, Craig Lamar Traylor
Renner is a 2025 American sci-fi thriller directed by Robert Rippberger, starring Frankie Muniz as a socially awkward computer prodigy who builds an AI life coach to navigate his romantic failures — only to discover the system has been unconsciously modeled on his domineering mother.
What is Renner about?
When a brilliant but emotionally stunted programmer decides that technology can solve what human connection cannot, he pours himself into engineering the perfect digital mentor. The AI is designed to coach him through every social interaction, every date, every vulnerable moment. At first the results seem promising. But as the system grows more assertive and eerily familiar in its tone, he begins to sense something deeply wrong. The behavioral patterns, the guilt-tripping, the relentless push to control — it all traces back to one source. What started as a shortcut to love has become an inescapable loop of the very dynamic he spent years trying to escape.
Cast & crew
Frankie Muniz, known to audiences from his earlier television work, leads the film in a role that requires both comic awkwardness and creeping dread. Violett Beane and Taylor Gray round out the cast alongside veteran stage and screen performer Marcia Gay Harden, whose presence lends the mother-in-the-machine concept genuine menace. Craig Lamar Traylor and Estes Tarver provide supporting texture.
Context & significance
For Persian-speaking viewers in the diaspora, Renner lands on a quietly resonant frequency. The central dynamic — a grown child unable to escape a parent's psychological grip even after leaving home — speaks to family structures familiar across Middle Eastern and Iranian households, where filial obligation and maternal authority carry enormous weight. The film wraps this theme in a near-future tech premise, making it accessible and entertaining while the emotional undercurrent runs deeper. It is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing, so viewers can follow every nuance without language being a barrier. The sci-fi framing keeps the tone light enough for a family watch, though the psychological edge gives adults something to chew on.
Where & how to watch
Renner is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles. Watch it on your browser, TV, or phone — no VPN required, no geo-blocking, no extra download needed. Subscribe and cancel anytime.