Taking a genre familiar to Sundance audiences and creating something distinct, if not entirely original, Ramzi Bashour’s road-trip drama Hot Water finds subtle humor in two characters who feel entirely disconnected from each other despite the home and DNA they share.
Layal (Lubna Azabal) is a Lebanese professor living in Indiana, teaching an Arabic class to students who seem to get on her nerves at every turn. She is living on edge and doing her best to keep it together. She’s recently taken an interest in her health by swimming, quitting smoking, and trying to meditate in the car between classes. Her 17-year-old son, Daniel (played by 25-year-old Daniel Zolghadri), has recently been kicked out of school over a scuffle following a hockey game, and Layal seems to be out of options. We are first introduced to Daniel in the hospital, where he is recovering from a concussion and other physical injuries.
Because Daniel is unable to fly to his father in Santa Cruz, his mother agrees to drive him halfway from Indiana to Colorado. The journey includes periodic stops and some confusion over heartland norms—such as what “chicken-fried steak” actually is. When Daniel’s father, Anton, cannot make it to Colorado, he sets them up with an old friend, Sasha (Dale Dickey), who takes them to a hot spring and shares an anonymous quote that seems to frame their journey: “God does not count against you time spent in hot water.”
Filmed on location throughout the Midwest, Las Vegas, and California, Hot Water was inspired by a road trip that Bashour took after studying abroad in the U.S. and contains notes of longing for one’s homeland. With a restrained tone that often finds humor in Layal’s headstrong, compulsive behavior, it makes great use of its locations and landscapes, giving this story a distinct sense of both place and displacement. Layal keeps a connection to her community in Beirut, including a sick mother, while living life abroad.
Despite hinted-at hardships regarding the father, Anton (who has faced his own demons and challenges and is perhaps still not in the best position to be a dad), the film buries much of that in the past, allowing traumas to surface only in casual conversation. Much is left unspoken as Layal is forced to deal with the present. The politics of academia are hinted at—including in a great early scene where she deals with an unhappy student—but Hot Water never makes it entirely clear if she is further stressed by the economic realities of working as contingent faculty. The film is perhaps most at home in its sparse moments in Indiana, observing Layal as she bursts with authentic anxiety.
Hot Water contains no great proclamations or life-changing moments, especially for Daniel, who leaves his friends behind with very little protest. The film is subjectively more aligned with Layal as she walks a tightrope between mother, caregiver, and daughter—all while navigating her feelings about being continents away from home. Despite the road montages and occasional moments of failure or argument, this feels mostly like Layal’s hazy memory of doing what she thinks is the right thing.
Beautifully yet simply shot by Rebuilding cinematographer Alfonso Herrera Salcedo, who captures the rest areas, motels, diners, and roadsides with care, Hot Water is just enough of a twist on the estranged parent-child road-trip movie to remain interesting. Yet one wishes it did a little more with the riches of these characters and performers. Hot Water is warm, but too restrained to really lean into an aching feeling of homesickness or the longing for a proper home that road films like Nomadland have explored. At one point, Layal encourages Daniel to say goodbye to their home in Indiana, an idea he thinks is silly. Moving around the world has jaded Daniel and, in turn, strained his relationship with both parents and his sense of community—a tragic outcome that leads to well-intentioned behavior that is not without consequences. Bashour’s script gives Azabal and Zolghadri the heavy lifting, and the film succeeds in large part thanks to their nuanced, often humorous performances.
Hot Water premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.