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The Starling Girl
Directed by
Laurel Parmet
R
2023
1h 56m
Drama
6.7
92%
96%
Rent for $3.99
17-year-old Jem Starling struggles with her place within her Christian fundamentalist community. But everything changes when her magnetic youth pastor Owen returns to their church.
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Cast of The Starling Girl
Eliza Scanlen
Jem Starling
Lewis Pullman
Owen Taylor
Wrenn Schmidt
Heidi Starling
Jimmi Simpson
Paul Starling
Claire Elizabeth Green
Rebecca Starling
Austin Abrams
Ben Taylor
Chris Dinner
Noah Starling
Paige Leigh Landers
Kelsey
Kieran Sitawi
Jeremy Starling
Jessamine Burgum
Misty Taylor
Kyle Secor
Pastor Taylor
Andrew Riley Stephens
Mike Stone
K.J. Baker
Anne Abbott
Ellie May
Sarah Starling
Brianna Bronger
Nora
Abby Hobek
Rachel
Laurel Parmet
Director / Writer
Kara Durrett
Producer
Kevin Rowe
Producer
The Starling Girl Ratings & Reviews
Kevin Ward
July 4, 2025
Eliza Scanlen continues to impress with every new role. Here she stars as Jem Starling in a coming of age drama about a 17y/o experiencing her sexual awakening while living in a fundamentalist Christian community. She begins an affair with a 28 y/o married man, Owen (Lewis Pullman). In a world where any acts of self love, self exploration and self expression are seen as vanity, Jem’s experiences with Owen enlighten her to the possibilities of a different kind of existence.
Austin Chronicle
Jenny Nulf
The Starling Girl's thoughtfulness and lingering optimism toward a story that is predictably sorrowful is a necessary balance.
Flip Screen
Nuha Hassan
The Starling Girl is a coming-of-age movie that doesn't explore the teenager's journey of adolescence; instead, it is a disturbing portrait of women who have internalised misogyny and the many ways in which women are conditioned to behave a certain way.
AWFJ.org
Nadine Whitney
Few coming-of-age stories are without some form conflict defining the protagonist; but Parmet's film allows Jem to reach a state of grace of which she was always deserving - of which so many young women are deserving.
A Good Movie To Watch
Farah Cheded
A piercing story of religious trauma told with expert nuance by a one-to-watch director and a tour-de-force lead... Yet more compelling evidence - as if we needed it - that you should never bet against an Eliza Scanlen performance.
Film Obsessive
Tina Kakadelis
By no means is The Starling Girl an enjoyable watch, in the sense that its subject matter is difficult to witness. In terms of filmmaking prowess, it's shocking that this is writer/director Parmet's feature-length debut.
RogerEbert.com
Monica Castillo
"The Starling Girl" lives and breathes through Scanlen's stellar performance.
Boston Globe
Glenn Kenny
Laurel Parmet makes a striking, assured feature directorial debut with "The Starling Girl," which serves double duty in solidifying Eliza Scanlen's already pretty solid reputation as a young actor worth watching.
Washington Post
Ann Hornaday
Parmet is confident enough to know that atmosphere, emotional tone and unspoken feeling can convey far more meaning than the talkiest of dialogue.
Los Angeles Times
Robert Abele
Parmet's less interested in cultish dread than a more naturalistic dullness of isolation and groupthink you'd find in any closed conservative society where women of faith have been sold a purity narrative.
Variety
Peter Debruge
It's a refreshing change to see this milieu treated with the level of nuance that Laurel Parmet brings to "The Starling Girl."
Ty Burr's Watch List (Substack)
Ty Burr
The saving graces of writer-director Laurel Parmet's debut feature are the detailed portrayal of a community the movies generally caricature and Scanlen's intuitive, impulsive Jem.
New York Times
Natalia Winkelman
A tender tale, "The Starling Girl" twirls through a spate of clichés... but sticks the landing thanks to Parmet's rapt attention to the shifting desires of her central character.
Slant Magazine
Ross McIndoe
The film is an impressively complicated and compassionate drama about shame and desire.
RogerEbert.com
Brian Tallerico
Scanlen shines, but everything around her is dull.
Vox
Alissa Wilkinson
The language and strictures of their religious community are perfectly rendered by writer and director Laurel Parmet, who captures the complicated interplay of power and immaturity that can blossom in isolated communities.
The Hollywood Reporter
Jourdain Searles
An insightful portrait of coming of age Christian.
Deadline Hollywood Daily
Todd McCarthy
Parmet shows dramatic confidence as she sets up a story that serves as a reminder of how dominant religion-based societies are in significant swaths of American life.
The Playlist
Jason Bailey
Scanlen's work here is steeped in the feeling of a real-life being lived right in front of you.
IndieWire
David Ehrlich
The power of this sensitive and devilishly detailed coming-of-age drama is rooted in the friction that it finds between biblical paternalism and modern personhood.
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