The Starling Girl
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Exclusive Clip: Laurel Parmet’s The Starling Girl
Filmmaker is happy to share an exclusive clip of writer-director Laurel Parmet’s feature debut The Starling Girl ahead of its limited release next week. In the two-minute long film excerpt, 17-year-old Jem Starling (Eliza Scanlen) interacts with her father Paul (Jimmi Simpson). As he leaves the room after their chat, he says, “Do not tell your mama,” exiting with an emphatic “Shh.” Jem then checks a mug he was using out of curiosity. As a teenage girl living in a Christian fundamentalist community in rural Kentucky, Jem has never felt that she truly fit in. Through an escalating bond with […]
by Filmmaker Staff on May 4, 2023 -
Trailer Watch: Laurel Parmet’s The Starling Girl
The trailer has arrived for writer-director Laurel Parmet’s debut feature, The Starling Girl, which will have its limited theatrical release this spring. A favorite from this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the film follows 17-year-old Jem (Eliza Scanlen) as she tries to find her place within a fundamentalist Christian community in rural Kentucky. In an intro ahead of his interview with Parmet and producer Kara Durrett out of Sundance, Erik Luers summed up the plot quite nicely: Parmet first began writing the screenplay in 2017, soon after the premiere of one of her shorts and the wrap of another. Like her previous work, The […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 17, 2023 -
“There Was a Lot of Important World Building To Be Done”: Editor Sam Levy on The Starling Girl
Jem Starling (Eliza Scanlen) is starting to feel out of place among her fundamentalist Christian community in The Starling Girl, writer-director Laurel Parmet’s debut feature. A 17-year-old girl living in rural Kentucky, the only person who Jem seems to relate to is youth pastor Owen (Lewis Pullman). However, as a married man, Owen’s “friendship” with Jem poses some serious problems—most of which will become the teenage girl’s burden to bear. Sam Levy, the film’s editor, tells Filmmaker about his industry origins and how he went about cutting Parmet’s relatively lean first feature. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 27, 2023 -
“We Lost Quite a Bit of Time Waiting Out Lightning Storms”: DP Brian Lannin on The Starling Girl
Seventeen-year-old Jem Starling can’t help but feel out of place in her fundamentalist Christian community. The only person who seems to understand her is Owen (Lewis Pullman), her church’s youth pastor. He’s more than eager to get close to Jem (despite being a married man), making for a complicated relationship that will inevitably bear harsher consequences for Jem than her older male counterpart. Brian Lannin, the film’s cinematographer, discusses his collaboration with director Laurel Parmet (who also happens to be his fiancé), the Kentucky shoot’s unpredictable weather and the film’s most difficult scene to shoot. See all responses to our […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 27, 2023 -
“It’s a Good Thing We Didn’t Shoot in New Zealand”: Writer-Director Laurel Parmet and Producer Kara Durrett on The Starling Girl
The following interview first ran as part of our Sundance 2023 coverage. The Starling Girl releases in theaters today in NYC and LA via Bleecker Street, with more cities to follow. — Editor Telling the story of Jem Starling (Eliza Scanlen), a 17-year-old living in a Christian fundamentalist community in rural Kentucky, Laurel Parmet’s debut feature, The Starling Girl, has been years in the making, Parmet first began writing the screenplay in 2017, soon after the premiere of one of her shorts and the wrap of another. Like her previous work, The Starling Girl positions the viewer within the complex […]
by Erik Luers on Jan 23, 2023 -
“COVID Hit and the Movie Fell Apart” | Laurel Parmet, The Starling Girl
Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film? I’m sure I am echoing many filmmakers in saying that COVID was 100% the largest unforeseen obstacle in getting this film made. We were gearing up to shoot in 2020, and then COVID hit and the movie fell apart. Those were some very dark times for me (and for many others), and I didn’t know if I’d ever get to […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2023
