Sundance Movie ‘Hot Water’ Acquired by ‘Apprentice’ Co-Distributor Rich Spirit
EXCLUSIVE: Rich Spirit has picked up North American rights to Ramzi Bashour’s feature debut Hot Water which made its world premiere in the U.S. Dramatic Competition earlier this year at Sundance.
A theatrical release for the mother-son road dramedy will be set for later this year. The movie will play at First Look, the Museum of the Moving Image’s annual festival for adventurous new cinema, in April in New York City.
Pic stars Lubna Azabal (Incendies, Paradise Now), Daniel Zolghadri (Lurker, Funny Pages) and Dale Dickey (A Love Song, Hell or High Water).
Hot Water follows a Lebanese mother and her American son on an odyssey across the United States. Azabal plays Layal, a tightly wound Arabic professor whose troubled teenage son Daniel (Zolghadri) 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 (Dickey)—that reveals the fractures and growing bonds between them.
Bashour stated, “I’m excited to join the slate at Rich Spirit and work with such a spirited team as we bring Hot Water into cinemas. Their steadfast belief in this very personal film and commitment to getting it on marquees means so much to me. I’m grateful we first got to share our movie at Sundance and now look forward to having audiences all across North America experience it on the big screen.”
The pic is produced by Jesse Hope, Max Walker-Silverman, and Josh Peters. Executive producers are Robina Riccitiello, Jawad Ahsan, Arsala Ahsan, Sakurako Fisher, Jan McAdoo, Jack McAdoo, Philipp Engelhorn, Dave Liu, Nicole Jordan-Webber, Will Levinger, Kyle Owens, Ethan Lazar, Austen Rydell, Ben Stillman, Steve Beckman, Tegan Acton, Emma Pompetti, and Adam Wyatt Tate.
The deal was negotiated by Cinetic Media on behalf of the filmmakers and Rich Spirit.
Rich Spirit’s debut acquisition and co-release was Ali Abassi’s The Apprentice, starring Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong, as Donald Trump and his mentor Roy Cohn, during the former’s rise in the 1980s NYC real estate world. The pic received BAFTA, Golden Globe, and Academy Award nominations following its world premiere in Cannes 2024.
