The Burning Question

In the smoldering heat of a post‑war industrial city, the reclusive physicist Dr. Gilbert Rooney (Gilbert Rooney) becomes obsessed with a paradox that could rewrite humanity's relationship to fire itself. When a charismatic journalist, Ida Edgington (Ida Eddington), arrives to chronicle his work, the laboratory transforms into a stage where ambition, love, and dread intersect. May Kitson, Rooney's estranged sister, re‑enters his life bearing a secret about a lost manuscript that hints at a forbidden alchemical lineage. Meanwhile, Inez Ranous, a disillusioned factory worker, is drawn into the experiment after a catastrophic blaze claims her brother, turning her into both witness and participant. As the team teeters between scientific breakthrough and moral abyss, the film interrogates whether the pursuit of knowledge can ever be disentangled from the incendiary consequences it ignites, culminating in a night‑long confrontation where the literal and figurative flames converge, leaving the audience to ponder the ultimate cost of curiosity.