A mother-son road movie more laced with humor than laden with trauma, Hot Water marks a warm and sensitive, if not entirely satisfying, debut feature from Ramzi Bashour.

There’s an undeniable familiarity that nips at the heels (or wheels?) of the film as it traverses classic American landscapes alongside its protagonists, a tightly wound Lebanese woman (Lubna Azabal) and her turbulent, U.S.-raised teenager (Daniel Zolghadri). We’ve been here before — in this situation, with these types, against these backdrops. Every year at Sundance, to be exact.

Luckily, the leads are good company, and there’s just enough in Hot Water that feels fresh and personal to lift it above dreaded indie staleness. Bashour has a light touch, an aversion to exposition, histrionics and overt sentimentality, that serves the material well.

If the film’s modesty, its glancing quality, is a strength, it’s also a limitation. There’s a nagging sense that the writer-director is just skimming the surface of his characters, their relationship to each other and to the country they live in. The Syrian-American Bashour knows these people and their story in his bones — the movie has several autobiographical elements — but he doesn’t always translate that depth of understanding to the screen.

The problem is an excess of tact — a reluctance to really dive into the ideas simmering here, to allow the central pair’s experience of forced proximity on the open American road to palpably complicate or illuminate their respective identities and points of view. As pleasant, and occasionally poignant, as Hot Water is, it never commits fully to either its comedy or the emotions that often feel assumed rather than earned. And Bashour is not yet a sophisticated enough filmmaker to conjure richness of meaning with the narrative and visual economy of a Debra Granik, a Kelly Reichardt or an Eliza Hittman, to name (perhaps unfairly) some American neo-realist touchstones to emerge from Sundance.

Hot Water is Bashour’s third collaboration with writer-director Max Walker-Silverman: The latter is a producer here, while Bashour composed the music for Walker-Silverman’s quiet soul-stirrer A Love Song and edited his more ambitious but less affecting follow-up, Rebuilding. Theirs is a softer, fuzzier regional cinema than the aforementioned auteurs’ work, infused with a wistful belief in the redemptive promise of American community, as well as a reverence for the natural beauty we take for granted.

In A Love Song and Rebuilding, the protagonists are rooted to the land in a way that Hot Water’s Layal (Azabal), a foreign-born professor of Arabic at an Indiana college, is not. Layal’s ambivalence toward her adopted home is a note of discordancy that the film never taps for its full dramatic potential — an example of how Bashour’s gentle approach veers toward a sort of frictionless amiability. The movie is full of fleeting interpersonal clashes, but deeper social and political undercurrents are left largely unexamined.

The catalyst in Hot Water comes when Layal’s son Daniel (Zolghadri) attacks another student with a hockey stick, getting himself expelled from the high school that’s already held him back twice. Out of options and patience, Layal decides to drive Daniel out to Santa Cruz to live with his father and finish out his senior year. Cue the procession of sunbaked cornfields, plains dotted with wind turbines, snow-capped mountains, craggy red rock, and the neon pageantry of the Vegas Strip. The expected stops at motels, diners and gas stations are punctuated by Layal’s fraught phone calls back to Beirut, where her sister reports on their mother’s declining health.

Hot Water ambles along agreeably, buoyed by the believably fluid dynamic between Layal and Daniel. The filmmaker and his performers don’t overplay the fractiousness; there’s tension in their relationship, but also teasing affection, respect and a push-pull of aggravation and amusement that is the near-universal dance of parents and teenagers. Daniel gets a kick out of winding his mom up and watching her go off; she chastises him for bad choices and ribs him for not speaking better Arabic. Bashour and DP Alfonso Herrera Salcedo favor straightforward two-shots to showcase that interplay, rather than close-ups capturing instances of individual reflection or realization.

“Why are you so tense and bummed all the time?” Daniel asks Layal, a question that hints at the gulf that separates this middle-class American kid and his immigrant single mom. He has enjoyed the privilege of nonchalance, of messing up, while she has endured the stress of providing a good life for her son while navigating cultural bewilderments like “chicken-fried steak” and students demanding do-overs on botched oral presentations.

I could have happily watched a whole film about Layal’s on-campus life teaching Arabic to mostly white students. A priceless, too-brief scene of her coaching a smiling, square-jawed bro through some challenging pronunciation indeed suggests Bashour doesn’t necessarily recognize what his most distinctive material is. Ditto a glimpse of Daniel, shirtless, rehearsing pick-up lines in the mirror — a seemingly throwaway moment that’s slyer and more intimate than much of the rest of the movie.

Tossing Layal and Daniel into a car and onto the road is perhaps the least interesting, and certainly easiest, way into this story, allowing the filmmaker to push them into confrontation with each other, and with America, rather than coaxing out conflict organically. To his credit, and in keeping with the spirit of the film, Bashour exercises restraint. Layal and Daniel do more bickering than blowing up, and Hot Water doesn’t over-indulge in fish-out-of-water shtick or ambush them with rednecks and racists.

Rather, their journey is textured with odd little encounters, some more compelling than others. Dale Dickey shows up as a benevolent, aphorism-dispensing hippie in an interlude that plays like filler. I preferred the unusually composed kid working the front desk of a motel (“I don’t know, I don’t eat meat,” he notes after referring a hungry Layal and Daniel to a nearby Jack in the Box). Or the run-in with a ripe-smelling hitchhiker, which at first appears to reveal a generational divide between mother and son before uniting them in revulsion.

Azabal (Incendies, The Blue Caftan), alternating among English, Arabic and French with regal impatience, is the kind of performer who can convey fierce love and pride with a mere glance, through sunglasses no less. Layal is perpetually harried — her exasperated “Oh, Daniel!” when he sneezes with a mouth full of carrot cake is perfection — but there’s also a sincere wonderment in the way she looks at her son. Zolghadri, so terrific in Owen Kline’s Funny Pages, flaunts the same gift for note-perfect line delivery here, pivoting seamlessly from sarcasm to authentic feeling and back again.

The leads are so strong that the movie’s reliance on cutesy shorthand — Layal’s constant hand sanitizing and her compulsive clementine-eating as a replacement for smoking, Daniel and Layal exiting their motel room in a slow-mo strut (have mercy, filmmakers: no more slow-mo struts) — registers as an unnecessary distraction. These actors don’t need things in boldface to build out their characters.

The final section, with its minor twist and succession of heart-to-hearts, seems calculated to surprise and stir, but underwhelms. It’s the offhanded bits of Hot Water that land most potently — the ones that hint at aches and yearnings beyond the immediate needs of the plot. “Did you say bye to the house?” Layal asks Daniel as they prepare to pull out of their driveway and hit the road. “The house has no ears, mom,” he mocks. Then, when she gets out of the car to grab something, he gazes up at the home he’s about to leave behind, and whispers: “Bye, house.” That kind of moment, tiny but casually heart-piercing, makes you impatient to see what Bashour does next.

There are ghosts inhabiting “Sound of Falling” — you just need to know where to look for them. German director Mascha Schilinski’s astonishing second feature could scarcely be more ambitious as it offers an impressionistic portrait of four young women who take turns residing in the same house over roughly 110 years.

But where other movies are overly precious while collecting the invisible string that binds characters from different time periods, “Sound of Falling” is stark and unsentimental. Covering the early 20th century through the present, gliding back and forth between eras with the deftest touch, the film views the living as merely the latest iteration of a fragile species that has been constantly struggling against unseen forces that drag it down, generation after generation. So many of the movie’s characters are long dead, their hopes and dreams now erased, while we strut and fret our hour upon the stage.

Winning the Jury Prize at last year’s Cannes, “Sound of Falling” introduces us to Alma (Hanna Heckt), a child living on her family farm in northern Germany around 1910; adolescent Erika (Lea Drinda), who occupies the house in the 1940s; flirty 1980s teen Angelika (Lena Urzendowsky); and Lenka (Laeni Geiseler), a shy tween hanging out with her mother and sister in the 21st century. Schilinski doesn’t hold the viewer’s hand, providing no title cards to indicate which time period we’re visiting. “Sound of Falling” doesn’t even start chronologically, opening with Erika as she silently adores her sleeping, bedridden uncle Fritz (Martin Rother), an amputee whose hairy chest and sweat-filled bellybutton entrance her. The reason for Fritz’s injury will eventually be revealed, but not immediately — Schilinski will not be rushed as her epic tale slowly unfolds.

In a sweepingly offhand way, “Sound of Falling” is a canny exploration of how sexism and repression echo across the ages. The unconscionable treatment of maids in Alma’s era finds uncomfortable parallels in the 1980s, when Angelika is both appalled and intrigued by the leering looks of her uncle Uwe (Konstantin Lindhorst). But Schilinski never underlines her points: Events occur not because the plot twists are attached to a larger thematic idea but, rather, because these women’s lives are crushingly commonplace for their time periods. It is only by seeing them in concert that we fully understand the whole symphony.

Much like the exceptional recent dramas “Aftersun” and “Nickel Boys,” “Sound of Falling” plays as an act of re-created memory. But while all three dreamlike films expertly mimic the imperfect act of remembering, Schilinski’s makes the past seem irretrievable — a ghost whose presence we can feel but not touch. “Sound of Falling” presents Alma’s and Erika’s agrarian segments as dusty museum pieces, with even the 1980s and 21st century portions coming across as hazy snapshots. The rueful voice-over from myriad characters is spoken in the past tense, the onscreen moments (even the present-day scenes) seemingly being recollected long after. And Fabian Gamper’s spectral cinematography sometimes incorporates POV shots that produce the sensation that we, the viewer, are physically touring these long-abandoned rooms. When the characters occasionally look at the camera, the effect is chilling, briefly but powerfully bridging the distance between then and now, them and us.

Audiences will gradually realize that there are familial connections between these women, although those specifics are best left discovered within “Sound of Falling’s” temporal drift. Family is central to Schilinski’s work. (Literally: She and Gamper are married, recently welcoming their first child.) Thus far, though, her films express misgivings about the virtue of those bonds. Her 2017 debut, “Dark Blue Girl,” concerned a young girl scheming to keep her separated parents from getting back together. In “Sound of Falling,” incest rears its ugly head, as does suicidal ideation and a relentless desire to escape. The four young women never meet, yet they share a sense of despair. Alma’s confusion at the secretive manner in which adults behave is no different than Lenka’s insecurity a century later as she befriends a girl (Ninel Geiger) who seems far older and wiser. What if Alma and Lenka could talk, “Sound of Falling” asks. What would they say to one another?

Such questions are central to this elusive marvel, which invites the viewer to complete the drawing that Schilinski evocatively sketches. Images and ideas repeat over time periods: buzzing flies, the taking of photos, the haunting use of Anna von Hausswolff’s 2015 ballad “Stranger.” The song’s lyrics don’t directly correspond to the beauty and pain contained in “Sound of Falling” — it’s just one more layer of enigma in a movie that doesn’t answer all its riddles. But these lines are a useful guide to appreciating its ghostly spell: “There is something moving against me / It’s not in line with what I know / Changing the heart, changing the spirit / Changing my path, changing my soul.” To see this film is to be transformed.

Movie Name :  Cheekatilo
Streaming Date : Jan 23, 2026
Streaming Platform : Amazon Prime Video
123telugu.com Rating : 2.75/5
Starring : Sobhita Dhulipala, Viswadev Rachakonda, Chaitanya Visalakshmi, Esha Chawla, Jhansi, Aamani, Vadlamani Srinivas, Ravindra Vijay
Director : Sharan Koppisetty
Producer : D. Suresh Babu
Music Director : Sricharan Pakala
Cinematographer  : Mallikarjun
Editor : KSN

Related Links : Trailer

After a long gap, actress Sobhita Dhulipala has returned to Telugu cinema with Cheekatilo, a web original that marks her debut in the Telugu OTT space. The series is directed by Sharan Koppishetty. Cheekatilo was released today in Telugu, Hindi, and Tamil, on Amazon Prime Video and here is our take on how it fares.

Story:

Sandhya (Sobhita Dhulipala), a journalist who quits her job over TRP-driven ethics, starts her own podcast. When her colleague Bobby (Aditi Myakal) and Bobby’s boyfriend are murdered, Sandhya uncovers a pattern linking multiple similar killings. Determined to expose the truth, she investigates the case and shares details through her podcast Cheekatilo, with support from Amar (Vishwadev Rachakonda). Who is behind the murders and why forms the core of the story.

Plus Points:

Sobhita Dhulipala takes on a role that is relatively new for her and handles it with ease. She convincingly portrays the inner pain of a woman haunted by unresolved truths. Vishwadev Rachakonda has limited screen time, but he makes good use of the scope given and leaves an impression.

While crime thrillers often reveal the antagonist early, Cheekatilo keeps the culprit hidden until the pre-climax. However, although the mystery is preserved, the film does not generate the tension required to make that reveal truly gripping.

Director Sharan Koppishetty attempts to explore the idea of unknowingly suppressing trauma through a few scenes, and the narrative from pre-climax to the climax works reasonably well. Aamani, despite limited screen presence, performs effectively. Vadlamani Srinivas gets a neat role, and seeing him in a different shade is refreshing.

Minus Points:

The core issue with Cheekatilo lies not in its concept but in its execution. In serial crime thrillers, sustained tension is crucial to keep viewers engaged. While the story offers ample scope for suspense, the narrative unfolds in a largely flat manner.

Because of this approach, the sense of urgency, what happens next and who could be the next target, rarely comes through. Scenes follow one another, but very few moments create genuine anticipation.

The police investigation, in particular, lacks seriousness and feels artificial, reducing its impact on the narrative. Similarly, the film does not convincingly establish how Sandhya’s podcast gains massive popularity in such a short span, making certain developments feel rushed and overly cinematic.

Several supporting characters, including those played by Ravindra Vijay, Jhansi, Suresh, and Vishwadev, are underwritten, limiting the emotional depth the story could have achieved. At certain points, repetitive scenes make the narrative feel stagnant, as though the film is reluctant to move forward.

Technical Aspects:

While Srikanth Pakala’s background score attempts to create a tense atmosphere, the flat writing prevents those moments from fully landing. Editing by KSN is passable, though trimming a few portions could have improved the pacing. Mallikarjun’s cinematography is adequate and suits the mood of the film. Production values are decent.

Director Sharan Koppishetty, along with co-writer Chandra Pemmaraju, presents a familiar story in a different setup. However, inconsistent execution and the lack of engaging narrative beats make the final result feel routine.

Verdict:

On the whole, Cheekatilo is a crime thriller that works in parts. Sobhita Dhulipala delivers a sincere performance, and the underlying message is clear and well conveyed. However, weak execution in a few portions, a lack of sustained tension at places, and some repetitive moments prevent the film from becoming a compelling thriller. If you enjoy thrillers, you may give it a try, but keep your expectations in check.

123telugu.com Rating: 2.75/5
Reviewed by 123telugu Team