Premiering in Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. Dramatic Competition section today at Eccles, Ramzi Bashour’s feature debut Hot Water tells a perceptive, humorous mother-son tale set amongst a cross-country road movie. Starring Lubna Azabal (Incendies) and Daniel Zolghadri (Funny Pages, Lurker), we’re pleased to exclusively premiere the first clip and poster ahead of the world premiere.
Here’s the synopsis: “In this unconventional road comedy, debut feature filmmaker Ramzi Bashour tells the finely observed story of a Lebanese mother and her American son on an odyssey across the United States. Lubna Azabal (Incendies) stars as Layal, a tightly wound Arabic professor whose troubled teenage son Daniel (Daniel Zolghadri, Funny Pages) is expelled from high school, prompting her to escort him from Indiana to California to live with his estranged father. As the pair move westward, they have a series of encounters with unlikely people and places—including a memorable stop with an eccentric friend (Dale Dickey)—that reveals the fractures and growing bonds between them. Poetically shot against expansive landscapes, roadside motels, gas stations, and diners, Hot Water upends traditional ideas of home and belonging with cutting humor and remarkable beauty.”
The poster is designed by Vanessa Saba, a Brooklyn-based collage artist and a monthly artistic contributor to The New York Times. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Numéro, Baffler Magazine, among others. Alongside her collage practice, she is also the creative director and designer of Mother Tongue magazine. The clip is courtesy of 110/220 LLC.
See the exclusive clip and trailer below.
