HomeCulture & Art Shows sexual molestation of Arab-American teen: Saudi girl stars in gritty Hollywood movie
Friday, 11 July 2008
A controversial Hollywood film about the rude sexual awakening of a young Arab-American girl is set to be released this summer, according to recent press reports.
Twenty-year-old Saudi-American actress, Summer Bishil, plays the lead role in Towelhead, a film about a teenage girl who comes of age in Texas during the 1991 Gulf war.
The movie is based on a novel by Alicia Erian and stars big names such as Aaron Eckhart and Toni Collette.
Bishil is the daughter of Saudi father of Indian descent and an American mother, Bahrain's Gulf Daily News reported.
She was born in California, but moved to Bahrain at the age of four and lived there for 10 years, appearing in several drama productions of the British School in Manama, the paper said.
The budding Hollywood A-lister, who has even been tipped for an Oscar for her daring role, now lives with her mother and siblings in California.
Bishil made a name for herself in U.S. tween-friendly hits Hannah Montana and Josh and Drake. She was recently chosen by Variety magazine as one of the 10 upcoming actresses to watch out for.
Towelhead, set to hit U.S. screens on Aug. 15, is the directing debut of Oscar-winning screenwriter Alan Ball, who wrote the script of "American Beauty" and created HBO's "Six Feet Under."
Bishil stars as Jasira, a 13-year-old Arab-American who is sent to live with her conservative and abusive father in Texas. Controversy has erupted over the film, particularly for its unsettling scenes in which Jasira is sexually molested by her neighbor, a married man and father played by Aaron Eckhart.
But the scenes are all filmed above the shoulder and focus on facial expressions, rather than the acts themselves, movie reviews said.
The movie also makes telling observations about how little things have changed in the past two decades by showing TV news coverage of America's first Iraq invasion in the background of the storyline.
The movie, originally titled 'Nothing Is Private' was acquired by Warner Independent and Netflix's Red Envelope Entertainment at last year's Toronto International Film Festival. It is set to be one of summer's sleeper hits in the U.S.
There is no word yet on when it will be released in the Middle East.
Bishil has also finished filming her second major Hollywood flick, Crossing Over, in which she appears opposite big names including Harrison Ford, Sean Penn, Ray Liotta and Ashley Judd.
Shes part indian part irish part german! How does that equal Saudi or Lebanese? She is supposed to play half lebanese half european how does that make her brown skinned and her father is light skinned? This is more Racial propaganda! The West knows nothing about arabs or the RACES of the Arab world, There are black arabs and white arabs and mixed race arabs etc.. Lebanese are almost all white mediterranean arabs they look like italians or greeks not brown skinned indian girls. Maria Bello plays her mother in this movie and is supposed to nothern european origin but shes looks more like a full Lebanese than the daughter. Maria Bello is of italian origin and looks more like a lebanese does! This movie is digusting lies that further negatively stereotypes the Arab american- resulting in the Attacks on indian sikhs and sparing the real arabs who blend into white looking america. FACTS NOT PROPAGANDA PLEASE.
September 04, 2008
Biographer : favfan
Although her father holds a Saudi passport he is of East Indian heritage. Thus making Summer Bishil an American by birth and a mix of ethnicities but not of Arab heritage.
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