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Director: Writer: Co-starring: Genre: Filming: Budget: Box Office: Runtime: |
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 friendship and acceptance from her neighbors Mr. Vuoso, an Army reservist, and Melina, a meddling but caring expectant mother. Thrown into an unfamiliar suburban world, Jasira must confront racism and hypocrisy at home and at school – and at the same time struggle to make sense of her raging hormones and newfound sexuality. Her boyfriend, Thomas, though a few years older, provides some comfort – but even that relationship causes problems when her father discovers that Thomas is black. Surrounded by adults who are just as lost as she is, Jasira yearns for understanding, even amidst often brutal acts.
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- Alan Ball (director): “She’s the worst mother in the world! What I loved about the character is that the fear she lives with is so intense – the minute she feels like she’s competing with her daughter for this guy’s attention, she feels she has to abandon her daughter. She’s really believing what she’s doing is best for her. That to me is fascinating. I’m sure it’s incredibly common, but that to me is like ‘Oh. My. God’. I just love actors who are like ‘Ok, I’m an actor. It’s my job to find humanity in this person, even though what she does I would never do it in real-life’. There’s so many actors out there that wouldn’t go near this part, because they feel people won’t like their character, and more so, it’d affect their standing on the Hollywood power list but they’re not actors, they’re commodities. I’m only interested in working with actors.”
- Alan Ball (director): “She does so much with the time she’s on-screen.”
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