Granted rare permission to film inside the country's highest security facilities, Israeli filmmaker Shimon Dotan shows everyday prison life, including biweekly family visits, internal elections, periodic security searches of cells, and relations between inmates and prison staff. HOTHOUSE also features interviews with many Palestinian prisoners, including those involved in suicide bombings. Although their political demands for an end to the occupation and full rights of citizenship are understandable, the bloodcurdling confessions of these proud, unrepentant and often smiling terrorists expose the moral disconnect required for such inhuman actions.

HOTHOUSE also makes it clear that the Israeli criminal justice system uses imprisonment to stifle or control Palestinian democratic political life, revealing that 13 prisoners, who were not involved in terrorist or military actions, were political candidates in the 2006 Palestinian elections, which saw the rise to power of the militant Islamic party, Hamas. In this regard, the film shows how Israeli prisons have become incubators for political education and debate, which often influences Palestinian society at large.

The Palestinian experience in Israeli prisons has become a national symbol in Palestine, and the prisons themselves have become virtual universities for Palestinian nationalism, shaping the prisoners' ideology, strengthening their political convictions, and, as was the case on South Africa's Robben Island or in the H-Blocks in Northern Ireland, enabling the development of future political leaders.