Director: Zack Ward
A small-town curio shop hides a doorway to somewhere else entirely in "The Keepers of the 5 Kingdoms," a 2023 family fantasy-adventure from director Zack Ward.
What is The Keepers of the 5 Kingdoms about?
An Arizona grandfather has spent years running a modest shop full of oddities, most of which his granddaughter assumes are just dusty souvenirs. That changes the day one particular stone turns out to be a working portal. The pair are pulled out of the desert town and dropped into a fractured realm split among five distinct kingdoms, each guarded by its own customs, creatures, and rules. Getting home means learning to navigate all five, and neither grandfather nor granddaughter arrives with a map. Along the way the film leans into practical world-building over spectacle for its own sake, using the journey to work out an intergenerational story about trust and listening to a relative you thought you already understood.
Cast & crew
James Hong and George Takei bring decades of screen presence to the supporting kingdoms, with Bai Ling and Gedde Watanabe rounding out a cast built for tonal range across five distinct settings. Michelle Mao and Matthew Sato anchor the human side of the story as the family thrown into the portal.
Context & significance
Released in 2023, the film sits in the low-budget family-fantasy lane that leans on portal mythology and episodic kingdom-hopping rather than a single sprawling set. Its five-kingdom structure gives each stretch of the runtime a distinct visual identity, which helps a 110-minute runtime move through its middle act without repeating the same backdrop twice.
Where & how to watch
"The Keepers of the 5 Kingdoms" streams on K-Time with a Persian-dubbed audio track, alongside the original English version. The film page itself is free to browse; watching the title requires a free K-Time account login. K-Time's interface, search, and recommendations are built around Farsi speakers, so subtitle and dub toggles sit exactly where diaspora viewers expect them.