Director: Ramzi Bashour
Writers: Ramzi Bashour
Stars: Dale Dickey, Lubna Azabal, Daniel Zolghadri
Synopsis: Mother and son hit the road west, stopping at diners, motels, and hot springs along the way.
Ramzi Bashour’s Hot Water is a film that has an undeniable heart of gold. Although that’s not a quality audiences might initially expect upon meeting the central characters of this road trip film. But before any road trip shenanigans, Hot Water opens to a sense of complete serenity. Layla (Lubna Azabal) is swimming in a pool next to an aquatic lamaze session. Regaining her breath, she looks over at the expectant mothers with a sense of longing. But there’s something else which appears to be hidden in her gaze. Azabal conveys a look towards this group of “just wait and see” when it comes to their soon-to-be motherhood. She should know: she’s raising her son, Daniel (Daniel Zolghadri), all on her own, and he has been held back in school more than once. Not to mention her feelings of loneliness due to being away from her mother and sister in Beirut for quite some time. And very quickly, we understand why Layla repeatedly returns to soothing exercises such as water sports and guided meditation. She is a woman who is absolutely fed up. Layla appears exhausted, beyond stressed by the students in her university class, and on top of it all, she’s 3 weeks into an attempt at quitting cigarettes. Her blunt demeanor is immediately funny and understandable, and Azabal absolutely nails the stark delivery of her character from the very outset.
Layla deserves all the peace in the world. But Bashour’s film has alternate plans for her. While the scenario of the film may be detrimental to Layla’s peace, it’s to the audience’s benefit. As we come to learn, Daniel has been expelled from school for a fight that broke out after his hockey game. Due to the potential risk of missing graduation, Daniel’s estranged father calls to offer Layla and his son a potential solution: if the two can drive from Indiana to Colorado, he can pick up Daniel and take him back to Santa Cruz to finish out the remainder of the school year and graduate on time. It’s a tough situation delivered as plainly as possible. It makes Layla’s frustrated outburst at Daniel’s father quite funny. But there’s also a clear-cut empathy in how Bashour and cinematographer Alfonso Herrera Salcedo capture Azabal grappling with such potential upheavals. It’s the first instance of many where Bashour blends very funny moments of his script alongside the more somber truths of life.
And so, this unfortunate situation makes way for a road trip that is an absolute delight for the audience. The road trip subgenre allows such freedom to a filmmaker, and Bashour takes full advantage of every aspect of being an on-the-road filmmaker. First and foremost, this is a dazzlingly picturesque trip. The wide open vistas speak to Daniel’s potential paths. For the audience, they appear stunning. For Daniel and Layla, they clearly represent opportunity. But that also may invoke a sense of foreboding and worry about what the future could hold for them both. Is this road trip the last chance they’ll have to spend a significant amount of time together for quite some time? With so many quiet stretches of driving and no phone to distract Daniel, there’s nothing to do but look out at the road stretching on for hundreds of miles ahead and ponder what lies not just at the destination, but beyond it. This road trip is taking place while both Daniel and Layla are absolutely going through it. And along the way, they are being forced to react and reflect on their lowest moments. As the old adage goes, “the only way forward is through.” While Layla’s internal struggles are a bit less fully realized than Daniel’s, Bashour’s script still fills this mother/son relationship with plenty of genuine emotion.
As heavy as this film may seem, it’s still also quite fun. For starters, Zolghadri plays a low-energy hooligan so incredibly well. You can tell that Daniel largely means well despite the trip being spurred on by a violent outburst. It’s clear that whatever happened must not have been understood with complete context. He is so effortlessly funny, and fills the quiet moments of the car ride with a random chaos bound to keep audiences consistently laughing. This charm even works its way into Layla’s mind from time to time. Despite her frustrations at how the trip begins panning out, her love for her son and his absurd sense of humor is palpable. She may freak out when it comes to some of his more desert-dry humor or alarming comedic actions, but they balance each other out a ton. It makes for a genuinely delightful pairing of Daniel as the funny man and she as the foil. But Bashour smartly recognizes he can get even more mileage out of Azabal by having her also turning on some comedic chops. As such, despite the emotional turmoil both mother and son are individually reckoning with, the two clashing personalities are able to shift and vibrate off one another. It works wonderfully well in the film’s favor.
From an elite Dale Dickey appearance to an absurdly funny visual motif which pops up across the entire film, Hot Water finds several ways to have fun despite the tough circumstances it revolves around. Our first impressions of Layla may likely lead us to believe she’s the embodiment of a rigid, type-A mother. But when placed in the claustrophobic quarters of a Subaru with Daniel, the walls begin to break down. She still has those motherly tendencies that will wind up any son, just as Daniel does things which would understandably drive any mother up the wall. But Azabal and Zolghadri both allow these frustrations to further humanize their characters and create moments the audience can perfectly relate to and be deeply charmed by. In the end, it would appear that reflecting on tough circumstances is merely a way to remind us that we sometimes have to make the best of a crummy situation. Hot Water uproots its characters from the setting they thought they belonged in, and then crafts a dual coming-of-age story as both mother and son try to find the sense of place that truly works best for them. Even if the thematic mileage may vary for some, it’s tough to deny the charisma present on screen.
Hot Water celebrated its New York premiere at First Look 2026.
