The laminar flow of a thin film of a nanoliquid over an unsteady stretching sheet is considered. An effective medium theory (EMT) based model is used for the thermal conductivity of the nanoliquid. A parametric study that deals with the effect of the unsteadiness parameter and the nanoparticle volume fraction phi on the dynamics of the liquid film is presented. The unsteady boundary layer equations are transformed to a system of non-linear ordinary differential equations and solved numerically using a shooting method together with Runge-Kutta-Fehlberg and Newton-Raphson schemes. The clear liquid results from this study are in agreement with the results reported in the literature. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.