The Sun Is Also a StarMovies like The Sun Is Also a Star
- Key Features:
- Young love, Immigration, Deportation, Fate vs. free will, New York City, Teen romance, Cultural diversity, Family drama, Coming-of-age, Star-crossed lovers, Adaptation
- Tone:
- earnest, dramatic, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Teenagers, Young adults, Romantics, Viewers interested in social issues
- Emotional Arc:
- Attraction → Conflict → Acceptance
The Sun Is Also a Star

Two young New Yorkers begin to fall in love over the course of a single day, as a series of potentially life-altering meetings loom over their heads - hers concerning her family’s deportation to Jamaica, and his concerning an education at Dartmouth.
The Sun Is Also a Star
A British college student falls for an American student, only to be separated from him when she's banned from the U.S. after overstaying her visa.

Hadley and Oliver begin falling in love on a flight from New York to London, but when they lose each other at customs, can they defy all odds to reunite?

After decades apart, childhood friends Nora and Hae Sung are reunited in New York for one fateful weekend as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life.

A depressed man moves back in with his parents following a recent heartbreak and finds himself with two women.

Two outsiders, both shaped by the circumstances that have brought them together, forge a deep and lasting love.

Mika is a fresh high school student who starts texting a mysterious boy. She is shocked when he reveals who he is - Hiro, a delinquent attending her school. What she doesn't know is that Hiro isn't as bad as he seems.

An adventurous love story between two young women of different social and economic backgrounds who find themselves going through all the typical struggles of a new romance.

Two high school students form an intense connection as they navigate the challenges of discovering and expressing their truest selves.

Fifteen-year-old country girl Suzume Yosano has to move to Tokyo to live with her uncle due to her father's transfer. She bumps into a mysterious man who ends up taking her to her uncle's place after she gets lost. Turns out, Suzume will be seeing him a lot more often once she starts school because... he's her homeroom teacher?!

Katie, a 17-year-old, has been sheltered since childhood and confined to her house during the day by a rare disease that makes even the smallest amount of sunlight deadly. Fate intervenes when she meets Charlie and they embark on a summer romance.

Carmen is a gypsy teenager, destined to live a life that is repeated every generation: getting married and raising as many children as possible. But one day she meets Lola, an uncommon gypsy who dreams about going to university, does graffiti and is very different. Carmen quickly develops a complicity with Lola and discovers a world that, inevitably, leads them to be rejected by their families.

A teenager who's lived a sheltered life because she's allergic to everything, falls for the boy who moves in next door.

Shy, straight-A student Ellie is hired by sweet but inarticulate jock Paul, who needs help wooing the most popular girl in school. But their new and unlikely friendship gets tricky when Ellie discovers she has feelings for the same girl.

A young Hip Hop star named Summer G falls for a middle to upper class sister while in college. After she rejects him for a fellow social climber, Summer G spends ten years building a Hip Hop empire, then moves to the Hamptons where he finds the object of his affections.

Remi and Barnes, two very different teenagers, meet by chance in the winter of their senior year, then spend four days together over the course of a year that will change their lives forever.

In 1950s Ireland and New York, young Eilis Lacey has to choose between two men and two countries.

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a patient named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.

Clare and Aidan make a pact to break up before college — no regrets, no broken hearts. But will one epic goodbye date offer them a last chance at love?

An unassuming high schooler finds himself inexplicably drawn to the free-spirited new girl, whose unconventional ways change how they see themselves…and their world.

Kuba attends an art opening with his girlfriend of two years and bumps into Mikal. The connection between these two young men is instantaneous and intoxicating, and despite opposition from all sides, he allows Mikal into his life. The results go beyond anything he could have imagined. This intimate and bold second feature from Polish director Tomasz Wasilewski captures the often-complicated consequences of finding love where others do not want it.

A summer fling born under the Sicilian sun quickly develops into a heartbreaking love story that forces a boy and girl to grow up too quickly.

Something Like Summer traces the tumultuous relationship of Ben and Tim, secret high school sweethearts who grow over the years into both adulthood enemies and complicated friends.

Ryan and Jennifer are opposites who definitely do not attract. At least that's what they always believed. When they met as twelve-year-olds, they disliked one another. When they met again as teenagers, they loathed each other. But when they meet in college, the uptight Ryan and the free-spirited Jennifer find that their differences bind them together and a rare friendship develops.

Years into a benevolent alien occupation, mankind is still adjusting to its new overlords. Their technology initially held promise for global prosperity, but rendered most human jobs – and steady income – obsolete. When two teenagers discover the aliens are fascinated with human love and will pay for access to it, they decide to livestream their romance to make extra cash for their families.

A group of queer best friends gather in the Fire Island Pines for their annual week of love and laughter. However, desires, dramas, drink and drugs push their bonds to the limits.

When successful dating app creator Alana hesitantly gets engaged, she returns to her hometown in Florida to deliver the news to her dad. Upon returning home, she crosses paths with her former flame, Kai, and finds herself falling in love with the fun and adventurous lifestyle tied to her community. As Alana and Kai work together to help her dad restore his declining property, Alana finds herself conflicted as to whether or not her current way of living makes her happier than the home and community that she always knew and loved.

A young and fiercely independent woman, Carmen, is forced to flee her home in the Mexican desert following the brutal murder of her mother. She survives an illegal border crossing into the US, only to be confronted by a lawless volunteer border guard. When the border guard and his patrol partner Aidan become embroiled in a deadly standoff, the pair is forced to escape together.

Elisabeth and John John are raised in the same city, yet they live light years apart, separated economically, socially and culturally. That is until the day they start in the same high school class.

A boy experiences first love, friendships and injustices growing up in 1960s Taiwan.

Harvard Law student Oliver Barrett IV and music student Jennifer Cavilleri share a chemistry they cannot deny - and a love they cannot ignore. Despite their opposite backgrounds, the young couple put their hearts on the line for each other. When they marry, Oliver's wealthy father threatens to disown him. Jenny tries to reconcile the Barrett men, but to no avail.

On the outskirts of Brooklyn, Frankie, an aimless teenager, suffocates under the oppressive glare cast by his family and a toxic group of delinquent friends. Struggling with his own identity, Frankie begins to scour hookup sites for older men.

Eli has four children, an unemployed husband and a job with an almost impossible commute. Vale is single and makes ends meet by working in clubs as a dancer. Tied by a profound emotional bond of true sisterhood, the two women's lives are two sides of the same coin, but their mutual solidarity isn’t always enough to lighten the load of their difficult circumstances.

Quickie-mart employee Melissa and paraplegic Richie are very much in love. Supported only by Melissa’s small hourly wage, they are nevertheless thrilled to learn that Melissa is pregnant. Then their situation deteriorates, and their tenuous financial situation threatens to bring their happy life crashing down.

It's the summer before 6th grade, and Clark is the new-in-town biracial kid in a sea of white. Discovering that to be cool he needs to act 'more black,' he fumbles to meet expectations, while his urban intellectual parents Mack and Gina also strive to adjust to small-town living. Equipped for the many inherent challenges of New York, the tight-knit family are ill prepared for the drastically different set of obstacles that their new community presents, and soon find themselves struggling to understand themselves and each other in this new suburban context.

Pop star Christopher Wilde has fame, fortune and a big-budget Hollywood movie awaiting him. But after meeting Jessica Olson, a down-to-earth girl from the Midwest, he is faced with following his heart or doing what's best for his career.

Lennie is a teen musical prodigy grieving the death of her sister when she finds herself caught between a new guy at school and her sister's devastated boyfriend. Through her vivid imagination and conflicted heart, Lennie navigates first love and first loss.

Pressured by their immigrant parents to find spouses, two Indian-Americans pretend to date in order to survive a summer of weddings – but find themselves falling for each other as they struggle to balance who they are with who their parents want them to be.

A polyptych of interconnected stories in different time-zones, shifting between a Yunnan village, a campus, and the Gobi Desert.

New York is a contemporary story of friendship set against the larger than life backdrop of a city often described as the centre of the world. Omar has gone abroad for the first time in his life and soon enough he begins to see and love America through the eyes of his American friends - Sam and Maya. It is the story of these three friends discovering a new world together.

A nursing student forced to quit school for family reasons winds up taking a job as a doorman in an elite apartment building in New York City, where he sparks to one of his residents.

14-year-old Lila spends a languid South Brooklyn summer playing third wheel to her promiscuous friend Chiara and Chiara’s boyfriend Patrick. Eager for her own sexual awakening, Lila gamely decides to pursue the older, thuggish Sammy, rumored to sleep with anyone.

Eighteen-year-old Penny Cooper spent years pining for heartthrob surfer Johnny Sanders Jr. before his father’s tragic death brought them closer together. But now high school is over, and when mysterious country musician Ash Baker shows up on the beach, Penny is torn.

A young social climber wins the heart of a beautiful heiress but his former girlfriend's pregnancy stands in the way of his ambition.

Waverly thought she had her future figured out: she’d start her medical residency in Toronto after a summer visit to her parents in Taipei. When her plans suddenly change, she makes an impulsive detour to a small Canadian town where she meets local lifeguard Blake. After he saves her from nearly drowning at a beach party, Blake offers to teach Waverly to swim, and as the lessons continue, the two unexpectedly find themselves falling in love.

Mio is a girl in high school who slacks off. She and her childhood friend Arata and best friend Madoka spend their after-school days in Ikebukuro hanging out. One day, Madoka tells Mio that she loves Arata, and Mio realizes that she loves Arata, too. But she’s scared of their relationship falling apart and lies, saying she’ll help them. Mio deliberately acts coldly to Arata, and they get into a fight. She decides to work things out with Arata, but gets into a car accident on her way to meet him. She wakes up in a mysterious world. It's the Ikebukuro she knows, but something’s different...

A young man’s difficult entry into adulthood, who experiences the highs and lows of his first love, while dealing with the familial fallout spurred by the financial crisis of 2008.

A day in the life of a group of teens as they travel around New York City skating, drinking, smoking and deflowering virgins.

Sugihara, a Japanese-born, third-generation Korean teenager struggles to find a place in a society that will not accept him.

Childhood friends Matías and Jerónimo reach adolescence and experience sexual attraction to each other, before being separated by circumstances. Later, as young adults, they meet again, and the film follows themes of complicated relationships and sexual tensions, as well as issues of homophobia.

Marisa Ventura is a struggling single mom who works at a posh Manhattan hotel and dreams of a better life for her and her young son. One fateful day, hotel guest and senatorial candidate Christopher Marshall meets Marisa and mistakes her for a wealthy socialite. After an enchanting evening together, the two fall madly in love. But when Marisa's true identity is revealed, issues of class and social status threaten to separate them. Can two people from very different worlds overcome their differences and live happily ever after?

Just before Anne is moving from Amsterdam to live with her great love Sara in Montreal, her publisher criticizes the manuscript for her first novel. What exactly is the story she's trying to tell? Does she even have something to say at all? Anne is forced to search for what she wants in life, because it is not only the main character in her novel who seems to be a little lost.

When an aspiring young artist is forced to join her high school track team, she uses it as an opportunity to pursue the girl she's been harboring a long-time crush on. But she soon finds herself falling for an unexpected teammate and discovers what real love feels like.

As a young New York couple goes from college romance to marriage and the birth of their first child, the unexpected twists of their journey create reverberations that echo over continents and through lifetimes.

When a small town woman with southern charm is given a big promotion managing a store in the Big Apple, she tries to adopt a big city personality and it leads to disastrous results.

The love between Noah and Nick seems unwavering despite their parents' attempts to separate them. But his job and her entry into college open up their lives to new relationships that will shake the foundations of both their relationship and the Leister family itself.

Long-term couple Owen and Hallie are breaking up—or maybe not?—and just as their relationship reaches a turning point, Matt and Willa embark on a romance of their own.

Two teen track stars discover first love as they train for the biggest relay race of their young lives.

Ezequiel, a sixteen-year-old gay teenager in his sexual awakening, meets a boy of twenty-one. They quickly start a relationship and the situation unravels unexpectedly.

During summer vacation in a beachside town, 16-year-old Deniz seeks the affection of his childhood crush and navigates a love triangle.

A wealthy young man pursues a young woman of modest means, but circumstances often separate them as the years pass.

In 2008, during the last month of summer before high school begins, an impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy learns what his family can't teach him: how to skate, how to flirt, and how to love your mom.

A young, ambitious New York City matchmaker finds herself torn between the perfect match and her imperfect ex.

Two young people arrive in New York to spend a weekend, but once they arrive they're met with bad weather and a series of adventures.

Two strangers believe in love but never seem to be able to find its true meaning. In a wild twist of events, fate puts each in the other's path on one stormy New Year's Eve.

Forced to give up his dreams of art school, Zach works dead-end jobs to support his sister and her son. Questioning his life, he paints, surfs and hangs out with his best friend, Gabe. When Gabe's older brother returns home for the summer, Zach suddenly finds himself drawn into a relationship he didn't expect.

A young American woman is sent by her parents to a cultural immersion program in Taipei where she begins a new journey of self-discovery and romance.

Two youngsters from rival New York City gangs fall in love, but tensions between their respective friends build toward tragedy.

Set in the 1980s, a young Italian-American from the wrong side of the tracks falls for a Jewish girl from Long Island.

Sparks fly after Ali and Ava meet through their shared affection for Sofia, the child of Ali’s tenants whom Ava teaches. Ali finds comfort in Ava’s warmth and kindness while Ava finds Ali’s complexity and humour irresistible. As the pair begin to form a deep connection they have to find a way to keep their newfound passion from being overshadowed by the stresses and struggles of their separate lives and histories.

Gab has a well-ordered life: a fiancée, a wealthy family. Leïla, who struggles to juggle her studies, odd jobs, and a brother to support, does not allow herself to live her own life... When Gab meets Leïla, it is a clash of worlds, the beginning of a great love story that will collide violently with reality.

The story of the forbidden relationship between a 'low born' boy and a 'high born' girl in an alternate reality where every person's relationships and life worth are determined by their innate 'frequencies'.

Hannah and Tahir fall in love while homeless on the streets of New York. Shelter explores how they got there, and as we learn about their pasts we realize they need each other to build a future.

On a flight from Los Angeles to New York, Oliver and Emily make a connection, only to decide that they are poorly suited to be together. Over the next seven years, however, they are reunited time and time again, they go from being acquaintances to close friends to... lovers?

Joris is trying to come to terms with his broken family relationships on the 10th anniversary of his father’s death when he meets the free-spirited, Yad. Also dealing with family issues, Yad has returned home to The Netherlands after living on his own. Joris and Yad spark an instant connection and decide they want to be more than “just friends,” but fear their families could threaten their relationship.

Mi-so and Ha-eun meet in elementary school and quickly become best friends. In high school, Ha-eun meets Jin-woo and starts to have feelings for him, but he starts to have feelings for Mi-so. When they all meet again as adults, they are very different people, but they try to remember what friendship is really about.

A coming-of-age movie that tells a story unfolding in every high school around the country -- a story of kids hiding their true identities in plain sight, even as they feverishly pursue their hearts' desires.

Eugenio offers his childhood friend Martin work for the summer. With a game of power and desire a relationship starts to grow that goes beyond their friendship.

Joe and Lucy are roommates and best friends. Lucy, whose love life is embarrassingly dull, convinces Joe, who is infatuated with a neighbor he's never met, that if they don't have stable romances within a month, they must jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.

Elio, a space fanatic with an active imagination, finds himself on a cosmic misadventure where he must form new bonds with eccentric alien lifeforms, navigate a crisis of intergalactic proportions and somehow discover who he is truly meant to be.

Teenage lovers Tony and Tyan-Hwa tip the balance of power in New York's Little Italy and Chinatown.

At Pacific Palisades High, a poor Latino falls hard for a troubled girl from the affluent neighborhood.

While vacationing on the crowded beaches of Riccione, a group of teenagers becomes fast friends as they grapple with relationship issues and romance.

On the night of her college graduation, Natalie's life splits into parallel realities after she takes a pregnancy test. What will life and love bring?

In the 1980s a group of foreign-born Korean teenagers who meet at a Seoul summer camp to learn what it means to be Korean. The three boys, from the U.S., Mexico, and Germany, then meet three girls who rock their world.

Jun arrives in Hong Kong from mainland China, hoping to be able to earn enough money to marry his girlfriend back home. He meets the streetwise Qiao and they become friends. As friendship turns into love, problems develop, and although they seem meant for each other they somehow keep missing out.

Mabel, Liam and Aaron have been friends since childhood. Their bonds of friendship are tested when, years later, they realize their friendship is the only reason they have made it through emotional hardships and extreme tragedies.

The sweeping tale of Molly Callens and Ryan Kelly, two young students who share a profound friendship their first semester in college, a time that becomes the defining moment of their lives.

Yuan Xiangqin, a high school student, is deeply in love with Jiang Zhishu, her schoolmate. He rejects her, only for them to live together when the house that she resides in collapses.

Not long after moving into her own place, Maggie finds herself with two unsolicited roommates: her recently divorced mother, Lila, and her young brother. The timing is especially bad, considering Maggie has fallen hard for an attractive woman, Kim, only hours before they move in. What could be a nonissue becomes increasingly complicated -- since Maggie's family is unaware of her sexual orientation, and Maggie is not open to sharing that information.

14-year-old Eun-hee moves through life like a hummingbird searching for a taste of sweetness wherever she may find it. Ignored by her parents and abused by her brother, she finds her escape by roaming the neighborhood with her best friend, going on adventures, and exploring young love.

Mateo is an intelligent boy who falls in love with Daniel, but when everyone reveals that relationship, Mateo is at a crossroads, and he will have to decide between fighting his adversities or giving up everything, even his life.

Monica Wright and Quincy McCall grew up in the same neighborhood and have known each other since childhood. As they grow into adulthood, they fall in love, but they also share another all-consuming passion: basketball. As Quincy and Monica struggle to make their relationship work, they follow separate career paths though high school and college basketball and, they hope, into stardom in big-league professional ball.

A former child actress attends college in search of independence and ends up becoming romantically involved with a female professor. Their relationship thrives until an opportunity to return to acting forces her to make life-altering decisions.

Highly intelligent computer major Zoey Miller is uninterested in romantic love, but her life is turned upside down when Zack, the school's soccer star, gets amnesia and mistakes Zoey for his girlfriend.

A young man raised by scientists on Mars returns to Earth to find his father.

A privileged girl and a charismatic boy's instant desire sparks a love affair made only more reckless by parents trying to keep them apart.

An aspiring music journalist lands her dream job and is about to move to San Francisco when her boyfriend of nine years decides to call it quits. To nurse her broken heart, she and her two best friends spend one outrageous last adventure in New York City.

A new couple and their families reckon with modern love amid culture clashes, societal expectations and generational differences.

The story of two lovers and their attempts to save their relationship in a near-future world on the brink of cosmic collapse. John, and world-famous ice skating star, Elena, are about to sign divorce papers when they realise that, in spite of everything happening around them, their love is worth fighting for. It's All About Love is a fresh take on modern love and future life as two lovers struggle in a conspiracy of epic proportions.
