The Team Behind ‘Hot Water’ Describes Making a Film That Was a ‘Road Trip First and Foremost, and a Movie Second’

“Hot Water” is the kind of story that couldn’t have been told by anyone other than the person who made it. Ramzi Bashour’s feature debut follows a teenager from Indiana who takes a road trip to see the American West with his Lebanese immigrant mother after being expelled from high school. And as Bashour and stars Daniel Zolghadri and Dale Dickey explained during their visit to the IndieWire Studio, presented by Dropbox, the film was born out of personal experiences.

“My mother is from Indiana, my father is from Syria, but I grew up in Beirut, Lebanon,” Bashour said. “And after 2006 I moved to Indiana where I was a resident from my mom. Four years later I graduated from [Indiana University], and that was when I really saw the United States for the first time. I traveled around for a year, working in kitchens and farms around the country. That’s when I really saw the American West.”

Those formative memories of seeing Western scenery for the first time, along with the lingering feeling of spending his life on the move, provided the initial inspiration for the film that became “Hot Water.”

“Movement has always been a part of my life, sometimes planned and sometimes not planned. Dislocation, home, exploration… it was just always a part of these formidable years growing up,” he continued. “It really all mapped into my visual vocabulary and into my psyche when I was traveling around. I knew something was bubbling up, that something special was getting imprinted, when I saw the open plains, mountains, canyon lands, hot springs, cities, deserts, all the way to the Pacific. You see all these things, and then years later after leaving the United States again, the images were just really engrained in my memory. And it came out as a fictional film.”

Zolghadri added that one of the best parts of shooting a road trip movie is getting to take an actual road trip, explaining that traveling between the film’s many locations was an experience that he’ll never forget.

“This was a road trip first and foremost, and a movie second,” Zolghadri said. “It was five weeks of shooting, and we spent a week in each state… It was a real journey. As an actor, you’re really looking for an experience first and foremost.” 

Watch our complete conversation with the “Hot Water” team above.

Dropbox is proud to partner with IndieWire and the Sundance Film Festival. In 2026, 68% of feature films premiering at Sundance used Dropbox during production. Dropbox helps filmmakers and creative teams find, organize, secure, and share the content that matters most to any project.