Blue Heron
Sophy Romvari · 2025 · 90 minutes
May 27, 2026 · Regal Riviera · 7:00 p.m.
Blue Heron stars Eylul Guven as Sasha, the eight-year-old daughter of a Hungarian immigrant family who relocate to Vancouver Island in the late 1990s. Young Sasha’s childhood becomes increasingly charged when her older half-brother Jeremy begins displaying dangerous behavioral issues.
Blue Heron had its world premiere at the 78th Locarno Film Festival, where writer-director Sophy Romvari won the Swatch First Feature Award, and had its Canadian premiere at TIFF, where it was named to Canada’s Top Ten list for 2025. Richard Brody of The New Yorker praises Romvari for bringing “keen observation and wondrous imagination to the quasi-autobiographical story.”
Romvari built her reputation with a series of acclaimed shorts, which are currently being featured on The Criterion Chanel. (Blue Heron is being distributed by Criterion’s sister company, Janus Films and will eventually be added to the Criterion Collection.) Romvari’s short films have also received a retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image.
“It’s a tender but devastating work that exists in the netherworld between documentary and fiction, where the innate artificiality of re-creating something that actually happened allows a filmmaker to get to a greater truth.” – Vulture
“Its boldly distinctive method is inseparable from its emotional vitality, and its audacious sense of form is as immediate and personal as the story it tells. It’s a memory-film that captures inner life with physical style: patience, speed, precision, and breathtaking leaps.” – The New Yorker