Sundance Film Festival 2023: 20 Movies You Need To Know About
10. The Starling Girl
Another incredibly impressive feature debut now, with writer-director Laurel Parmet's The Starling Girl.
Eliza Scanlen, who is fast becoming one of the most interesting young actors working today, stars as Jem, a 17-year-old girl who has grown up in a fundamentalist Christian community in Kentucky.
But everything changes when her handsome youth pastor, Owen (Lewis Pullman), returns home from missionary work and the two embark on an uneasy secret relationship.
Though the narrative particulars of Parmet's film don't offer many surprises, the central performances from Scanlen and Pullman are so note-perfect in delivering a topical character study about sexual awakening and repression. You've seen similar stories before, but rarely executed this well.
The Starling Girl is currently seeking distribution.