Blue Heron (2025)
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2025-09 to 2026-08
A Hungarian immigrant family struggles to navigate their new life on Vancouver Island while dealing with their eldest son's dangerous behavior.
The story
A Hungarian immigrant family relocate to Vancouver Island in the late 1990s while they struggle to deal with the oldest child who is displaying increasingly dangerous behavioural issues.
Full plot (contains spoilers)
A Hungarian immigrant family relocate to Vancouver Island in the late 1990s while they struggle to deal with the oldest child who is displaying increasingly dangerous behavioural issues. The film follows the family's experience in their new environment, specifically focusing on the eight-year-old daughter, Sasha, and her brothers. The narrative explores the journey of recollection and discovery for Sasha, who is seen as both a young girl and an adult, as the film unpicks memories to get a better grip on formative experiences. It is described as a memory piece that articulates life-altering grief, blurring the lines between fact and fiction through shifting perspectives and merged timelines.
- First release year
- 2025
- Runtime (minutes)
- 91
- Production countries
- Canada; Hungary
- Original languages
- English; Hungarian
- Directors
- Sophy Romvari
- Writers
- Sophy Romvari · writer
- Cast and characters
- Eylul Guven · Sasha; Iringó Réti · Mother; Ádám Tompa · Father; Edik Beddoes · Jeremy; Amy Zimmer · Adult Sasha; Liam Serg · Henry; Preston Drabble · Felix
- Genres
- drama
- Themes
- memory; grief; immigration; family dynamics
- Tone and mood
- laconic; affecting; shattering
- Setting
- Vancouver Island, Canada in the late 1990s
- Premise and plot tags
- semi-autobiographical; directorial debut
- Source material / true-story basis
- Romvari's own childhood and her previous short film Still Processing
- Reception
- The film received universal acclaim, with high scores on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. It was praised for its exploration of memory and grief, and was named to the Toronto International Film Festival's annual year-end Canada's Top Ten list for 2025.
- Awards and nominations
- Swatch First Feature Award · First Feature · win; Best Canadian Discovery · Best Canadian Discovery · win; Grand Prix · Grand Prix · win; Special Mention · Special Mention · win
- Production trivia
- The film is based in part on Sophy Romvari's own childhood.; The film was shot in British Columbia.; The film grossed $831,379 in the United States and Canada as of August 2026.
Film metadata comes from the open sources listed in Credits & Contact. Catalogue details may be incomplete.
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