Hot Water is the feature debut from screenwriter/director Ramzi Bashour. The film follows an American teenager and his Lebanese mom as they hit the road west after getting kicked out of an Indiana high school. Lubna Azabal and Daniel Zolghadri star, along with Dale Dickey.
The project was shot by Alfonso Herrera Salcedo and edited by Mollie Goldstein, ACE, who connected to Hot Water via the Sundance Lab.
"I’ve edited there in the past, and Hot Water was at the Writers’ Lab and the Directors’ Lab in 2024," she shares. "When the Hot Water team was looking for a New York editor, Ilyse McKimmie passed my name along. Ramzi had already cut together the first 40 minutes or so, so I had the benefit of being able to watch his cut and get a feel for the tone and performances before I read the script, which was really a dream. Many times in an editing interview, you’re guessing at hypotheticals, and when I met Ramzi and his producers - Max Walker-Silverman and Jesse Hope - I was able to speak directly to the cut."
For Goldstein (pictured), the edit continued Bashour's existing Adobe workflow.
"We were editing on Premiere and needed to be super scrappy," shares Goldstein. "I’m used to having a full-time AE to set up script sync in Avid or line-by-lines in Premiere, and that was not in the cards on an indie this size. I ended up working out a shortcut with Premiere’s transcription feature. I made a sequence of all the footage for the scene, had Premiere transcribe it, and then used the subtitle feature to automatically subtitle (it). This let me jump from title to title and search the text when I was looking for a specific line. It saved me from having to hunt through dailies when I wanted something specific and was shockingly fast and simple to set up."
Bashour and Goldstein collaborated in a small New York edit suite.
"My favorite part of the film on Hot Water was Daniel Zolghadri’s performance," shares Goldstein. Daniel was so grounded and made his performance look effortless. Every take was truthful – he’s one of those actors who can’t hit a false note. The film is about a mom (played by Lubna Azabel) and a son (Daniel’s character) on a road trip across the country. Ramzi and his team shot it while actually driving across the country, so all the scenery and b-roll out the car window are completely true to the moment. My favorite scenes to cut were when Lubna and Daniel got as loopy as a mom and a son really would be after hours and hours in the car together, and we could piece together improvised or throwaway moments to really capture the feeling inside the car."