Introduced by Toronto International Film Festival Co-Director Noah Cowan as "a playful provocateur," "Nothing is Private" director Alan Ball has created a new film that has prodded audiences in Toronto. The main characters are Jasira, a young Arab-American teenaged girl (Summer Bishil) and her strict, uptight Lebanese father (Peter Macdissi) living in suburban Texas at the time of the first U.S. invasion of Iraq. Based on Alicia Erian's novel "Towelhead," the film is a coming-of-age story that follows young Jasira's sexual awakening in the arms of an African-American kid at school and at the hands of racist military reservist neighbor who sexually assaults her.

Noting that he was struck by the complexity, heart, and humanity of Erian's book, Alan Ball said Tuesday during a festival Q & A that he viewed the character of Jasira as heroic, rather than being in a player in a story about the "fetishization of victimhood." (And, he added, any similarities to his script for Sam Mendes' 1999 film "American Beauty" were purely unintentional.)

For many months after the movie was announced by producer Ted Hope and sales company Celluloid Dreams, it was known vaguely as the "Untitled Alan Ball Project" (it was also produced by Steven Rales and Ball). In adapting Erian's "Towelhead" for the big screen, Ball said that he decided to change the film's title not only because the term is an offensive slur against those of Middle Eastern descent, but also because using that title makes the story more specifically about race and ethnicity. "I feel like this movis is about a lot more than that," Ball explained, adding, "Its about a universal coming-of-age moment in a young person's life," Ball emphasized.

Pressed about whether Jasira would have been violated by the racist neighbor had it not been for her ethnicity, Ball responded, "I don't mean the movie is not about her ethnicity, I mean its not just about her ethnicity." He continued, "I certainly think that her exotic beauty and the easy way it is for all the characters to characterize her as other...I think it was probably a litte bit easier for him to do what he did and had it been a young blond, blue-eyed American girl I think he never would have seen himself going there..."
Expressing excitement over working with Ball on his feature directorial debut in a statement tonight, WIP president Polly Cohen called "Nothing Is Private" a film that is, "provocative, warm-hearted and is sure to create a lot of discussion as his past work on 'American Beauty' and 'Six Feet Under' has."

[Director Alan Ball at the public screening for his film, "Nothing is Private" at the Toronto International Film Festival. Photo by Eugene Hernandez/indieWIRE.]