Stars at Noon 2022

Trish Margaret Qualley is a young American journalist stranded in Nicaragua during the COVID-19 pandemic, a country rocked by severe governmental instability. Her reporting on brutal extrajudicial killings has alienated both her editors and the ruling party, and with her passport confiscated she hovers in a precarious limbo. A sympathetic cabinet minister keeps a flophouse room for her, but the protection feels fragile, and Trish fears she will be executed once that shield falters. In a harsh economy of shortages and coercion, she resorts to exchanging sex with government officials to secure basic necessities that are otherwise unavailable while she hunts for a way out.

One night, in a hotel reserved for wealthy foreigners, she solicits a British man named Daniel DeHaven Joe Alwyn. He claims to be a petrochemicals consultant, yet Trish suspects he may be more than he appears—perhaps an intelligence operative. Their encounter is passionate and intimate, and the next day she follows him. She watches him meet with a man she identifies as a Costa Rican police officer, a detail that unsettles her. When she presses Daniel about the meeting, he is surprised to admit the officer’s true identity, and the two quickly become targets as the officer chases them through a bustling market.

Trish hides Daniel at the flophouse, but the Costa Rican officer tracks them down. The confrontation is muted by the reality that the building is protected by a government official, making a direct attack risky. As danger mounts, Trish and Daniel grow closer, the bond between them deepening into something tender even as the world around them trembles. Their emotional arc culminates in a deserted nightclub, where they share a quiet, romantic dance and Daniel speaks movingly of his wife, revealing another facet of his life.

The political system, meanwhile, reveals its boundaries: the government can no longer shield Trish, and money and protection both fray. Realizing their odds grow starker by the day, they flee toward the border in a desperate bid for safety. On the road, a man appears who triggers Trish’s suspicions about the hidden networks around them—a CIA agent figure who offers her safe passage to the United States in exchange for Daniel. Trish refuses, clinging to the fragile trust she has forged with him.

At the border, the terms shift again, and it becomes clear that the agent and the Costa Rican officer are colluding with the authoritarian regime, while Daniel’s own actions hint at destabilizing it from within. In a tense gambit, Trish and Daniel trade the car for a boat ride across the line. The smugglers are shot dead by unseen soldiers, and Daniel is wounded in the chaos. They seek refuge in an abandoned church, where sleep offers a fleeting respite before the siege closes in: armed troops, the agent, and the officer arrive.

Daniel urges Trish to abandon him, and she watches as soldiers take him away. A twist of fate arrives when a Nicaraguan police officer—one of Trish’s former clients—returns her passport, enabling her to fly home legally. The agent pays her and departs, leaving Trish to face the quiet aftermath alone in another hotel, carrying the weight of love, danger, and a narrow escape that reshapes her sense of home.