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 […]

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 […]

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 perspective of a young woman, presented here with the additional weight of the societal expectations of a religious community. One afternoon after she is “politely shamed” (this is a town in which everyone […]

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 […]