The Starling Girl

Jem Starling is seventeen and growing up inside a tightly knit Christian fundamentalist community in rural Kentucky, where the rules of her faith shape nearly everything she does. Dancing with her church group is her greatest pleasure, yet she worries that even this joy might be sinful, and she finds herself caught between her religious devotion and a dawning awareness of her own sexuality. Her life is unsettled further when Owen, a youthful pastor, returns to the congregation. His charm and his ease with the outside world draw Jem toward him, and the relationship that develops between them puts her standing in the community at risk.

The Starling Girl is a drama written and directed by Laurel Parmet, marking her first feature. Eliza Scanlen plays Jem, with Lewis Pullman as Owen. Wrenn Schmidt and Jimmi Simpson appear as Jem's parents, and Claire Elizabeth Green and Austin Abrams round out the cast.

The film was released in May 2023 and runs 116 minutes. It was made in the United Kingdom and the United States by 2AM, Pinky Promise and Sons of Rigor. Critical response has been notably warmer than general audience reaction: critics rate it 7.6 out of 10 across 90 reviews, while on IMDb it holds 6.7 from around 4,000 votes and on TMDB 6.4 from a much smaller pool of about 80.