The Starling Girl

Showtimes June 9 - 15:

With refreshing nuance, director Laurel Parmet’s The Starling Girl tells the story of a seventeen year-old girl growing up in a fundamentalist Christian community in rural Kentucky. As a teen, Jem Starling (Eliza Scanlen) is searching to find her place in her community. She finds joy in dancing with her church group, though her feelings are tempered by worry that her actions are sinful. When an enigmatic youth pastor, Owen (Lewis Pullman), returns to her town, those worries grow more complex. Finding herself attracted to his worldliness and charm, Jem experiences a tension between her own sexuality and her religious devotion and flirts with a relationship that could upend her life. Delivering a performance that lives, breathes, and ignites the center of the film, Scanlen cements her reputation as a young actor to watch in this impressively compassionate drama about shame and desire.

(US / 2023 / Directed by Laurel Parmet)
R / 1 hr 57 mins