Release Date: World Premiere August 8, 2025 (Locarno Film Festival); US distribution acquired by Janus Films; Canadian release April 17, 2026
Runtime: 90 minutes (1hr 30 minutes)
Rated: NR (Not Rated)
Production Companies: Funded by Telefilm Canada and the National Film Institute Hungary
Producers: Ryan Bobkin, Sara Wylie, Sophy Romvari, Gábor Osváth — Executive Producers: Riel Roch-Decter, Neil Champagne, Veronica Diaferia, Sara Eolin, Lauren Melinda, Jasmin Karibzhanova, Sam Sutcliffe
Cinematography: Maya Bankovic
Editing: Kurt Walker
Music/Composer: Blitz//Berlin
Blue Heron (2026)
Director & Writer: Sophy Romvari
Cast: Eylul Guven, Amy Zimmer, Iringó Réti, Ádám Tompa, Edik Beddoes, Liam Serg, Preston Drabble, Lucy Turnbull, Jecca Beauchamp
It appears that more and more newcomer filmmakers are making the simplest, yet most creative of choices when it comes to conjuring something fresh in the film world — something genuine and real to life. But how “real to life” can a project truly be when the world is eventually revealed to carry a sort of (sur)reality beneath its surface? Sophy Romvari’s feature debut, Blue Heron, employs magical tools of filmmaking and storytelling to touch on her own childhood, and the separation she eventually endured from her older half-brother, Jeremy (Edik Beddoes).
More than anything, the film feels deeply immersed and lived-in, owing to how intimate Romvari chooses to get with her shots and the moments she lingers on when examining the family at the center of it all. Starting with Sasha (Eylul Guven) as our window into this world, an early shot of an actual iPhone zooming in becomes a recurring motif — a device that pulls us closer and closer into those in-between moments of life that are only ever shared with the people you spent the most time with growing up.
Romvari also goes on to prove that CGI and visual effects are not always imperative in constructing a world that feels magical. Through a few clever editing tricks and a hybrid of actors alongside real-life experts in one scene in particular, Blue Heron distinguishes itself not only through its performances, its writing that cuts too close to life, and its cinematography — but through its ability to transport you across different emotional registers without any fancy technology, relying instead on pure creative instinct and thinking well outside the box.
Jeremy receives his own moments of stillness throughout, quiet for much of the film, yet impossible to ignore — his presence made known through his antics, behavior, and body language alone. Romvari is also careful to use space and blocking within her environments to underscore not only the emotional distance Jeremy holds from his family, but the physical one as well. And as with most kids, we are generally safe to assume they are non-threatening — most especially when they are our own blood and kin. Yet Jeremy slowly builds into something more unsettling; a sad and quietly threatening force. Moments are sprinkled in to remind us he still holds some compassion, even if it seems reserved mostly for his younger siblings, but the larger question the film poses is this: where does the guidance for someone like Jeremy truly begin and end? Is this a nature versus nurture problem? How much accountability can the parents reasonably carry — especially when they are already doing their best? And how much of that weight falls on Jeremy himself, as someone old enough to know where his intentions lie?
To round out the family portrait, we have the Father (Ádám Tompa) and the Mother (Iringó Réti), alongside Sasha’s two younger brothers, Henry (Liam Serg) and Felix (Preston Drabble).
Memory is not only imperative to the storytelling here — it is the emotional backbone of the entire film. Yet it becomes equally clear that Romvari is reaching for something beyond mere recollection. She is probing the mystery of human behavior, and the quiet, heavy accountability parents are sometimes forced to carry for problems that have no clean solutions and are entirely outside of their control. As Sasha recounts her childhood through Romvari’s clever, gradually zooming lens, we get glimpses into the deeper fault lines running through each relationship in the family. The tension between the Father and the Mother. Sasha’s attempt to understand Jeremy and everything surrounding his situation, while simultaneously building something real with her younger brothers. The friction of the social services system and the unpredictability of human behavior at large. All of it is shot in an almost uncomfortably real manner — a quality that only becomes more pronounced once the narrative takes its decisive turn.
Because while much of the story is filtered through the perspective of a child — confused, bewildered, curious — the latter half of the film brings a measure of clarity and closure to the questions that linger from those early years. Thrown into a more present-day timeline with Sasha now as an adult, we begin to see ripples of reality seep into both the narrative and the memories themselves, blurring the line between what happened and what was felt.
In contrast to her shy, observant younger self, adult Sasha seems to have channeled that watchfulness into something more active and searching. She wants answers — about her family, and more specifically about Jeremy, who remained a presence in her life for longer than one might expect. Until one day, the circumstances surrounding his disappearance render everything she thought she understood a little more vague and a lot more heavy. The last image we hold from her childhood is the arrival of social services — and from a child’s vantage point, that kind of intrusion can only register as confusion and fear.
Though that chapter of the story is touched on with deliberate restraint, it becomes clear that it is the crux holding the entire narrative together. Much is kept in the dark, as it would be from a child’s perspective when their parents are quietly managing a situation that is beyond the family’s control. But as adult Sasha goes searching for those answers, the fog begins to lift — slowly, incompletely, and all the more emotionally devastating for it.
Romvari is evidently a filmmaker of genuine and distinct talent. Every choice she makes — stylistically, technically, emotionally — points to an artist who knows how to build a story gradually toward something larger and more resonant than its individual parts. And while the personal nature of the material is what gives Blue Heron its raw power, it is the craft layered on top of that vulnerability that makes the film feel like something truly singular. Her stylistic fingerprints are so specific and considered that they don’t just complement the story — they become inseparable from it.
Ultimately, Blue Heron is a film that trusts its audience to sit with the things left unsaid, to feel the weight of the questions it raises without demanding easy answers. Romvari’s debut is a quiet, deeply felt portrait of family, memory, and the long reach of unresolved grief — one that arrives softly and stays long after the credits roll.