Hot Water, premiering in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at Sundance 2026, marks the feature debut of Syrian-American filmmaker Ramzi Bashour. Developed over several years while Bashour participated as a Sundance Fellow from 2022 through 2024, the film arrives with a measured confidence. Films Boutique has acquired international sales rights, with Cinetic Media handling North American sales.
Daniel Zolghadri and Lubna Azabal appear in Hot Water by Ramzi Bashour, an official selection of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Alfonso Herrera Salcedo.
The story begins with a rupture: an American teenager is expelled from his Indiana high school and sets out west with his Lebanese mother. From this spare setup, Hot Water unfolds as a contemplative road film, one that treats travel less as escape than as a way of thinking. Bashour’s direction favors accumulation over urgency, allowing expansive landscapes to frame a quieter examination of belonging, education, and the idea of home as something provisional rather than fixed.
Lubna Azabal and Daniel Zolghadri bring a natural ease and emotional precision to the central relationship, supported by a grounded turn from Dale Dickey. Together, they move through a version of America defined by distance and difference, where the act of crossing the country becomes a way of reckoning with diasporic histories and personal inheritance. Hot Water understands forward motion as something that often leads back to unresolved questions, aligning departure and return with understated insight.