Towelhead

Towelhead (2008) is Alan Ball's coming-of-age drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. A Houston suburb in the early 1990s, the Gulf War on every TV set. Thirteen-year-old Jasira is shipped off to live with her strict Lebanese father.

She's growing up somewhere her Arab heritage marks her as an outsider and her own body feels like a stranger's. She's drawn to a married Army reservist next door, has a crush at school, and burns with a curiosity no adult will discuss honestly. Ball, who wrote American Beauty, refuses to soften any of it: the film is awkward, unsettling, and at odd moments very funny.

Newcomer Summer Bishil pulls off a nearly impossible part, never reducing Jasira to victim or provocation. Aaron Eckhart plays the neighbor so charmingly it turns your stomach. This isn't a comfortable watch — it's about the ways grown-ups fail a kid, and it can be hard to sit through. That it never looks away is the whole point. Stream Towelhead (2008) online on iFILM.