Towelhead

Six Feet Under creator and American Beauty screenwriter Alan Ball makes his feature directorial debut with this screen adaptation of author Alicia Erian's controversial novel -Towelhead. Jasira (Summer Bishil) is a 13-year-old Arab-American who's contending with the pains of adolescence when her ...more

As a avatar of black comedy, writer/director Alan Ball founds his creativity upon ripping apart suburban living seam by seam. In doing so, he reveals that what we imagine to be the most mundane of settings maybe isn’t so humdrum after all. Behind the closed doors and perfectly manicured lawn of the Burnham household in American Beauty (written by Ball), for instance, lay a family whose maladjustments included infidelity, pedophilia, and depression. Ball’s neurotic characters are often written ...more

Calling this motion picture Towelhead makes the filmgoer blink for a second, as the original title, Nothing Is Private, is a bit less leading and more descriptive. Director Alan Ball creates an immediately uncomfortable setting when a young girl is sexually abused by her mother's boyfriend, betrayed by her mom, and shipped off to her frighteningly overbearing father. The central theme is the dysfunction of everyone around the 13-year-old protagonist, Jasira (played by 18-year-old actress Summer ...more