Towelhead (2008)

"Towelhead" follows the dark, bold and shockingly funny life of Jasira, a 13-year-old Arab-American girl, as she navigates the confusing and frightening path of adolescence and her own sexual awakening.

When Jasira's mother sends her to Houston to live with her strict Lebanese father, she quickly learns that her new neighbors find her and her father a curiosity. Worse, her budding womanhood makes her traditional and hot-tempered father uncomfortable. Lonely in this new environment, Jasira seeks...

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Movie Review

In the day of political correctness, it's nice to see a movie that bucks such a trend while still having something smart to say. Towelhead, from American Beauty writer Alan Ball, is an unconventional drama/almost-comedy about race and sex in the early 1990's. Set in Texas during the first Gulf War, Towelhead revolves around Jasira (Summer Bishil), a 13-year old Lebanese-American girl who is beginning to find herself sexually. Though her father (Peter Macdissi) is also American, he has a strict view of what's proper and a harsh form of love. This, coupled with the fact that Jasira has discovered how to give herself orgasms, leads to a variety of awkward-to-bad situations, including a relationship with a black boy (Eugene Jones) her father disapproves of and a few run-ins with her much older next door neighbor, played by Aaron Eckhart. Maria Bello and Toni Collette also star.

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