Title – Blue Heron (2025)

Director – Sophy Romvari (feature debut)

Cast – Eylul Guven, Amy Zimmer, Iringó Réti, Ádám Tompa, Edik Beddoes

Plot – Young girl Sasha (Guven) and her family move to Vancouver Island but the behaviour of her eldest brother Jeremy (Beddoes) threatens to derail their otherwise peaceful family life.  

“It feels like somehow I’m cursed”

Review by Eddie on 09/11/2026

Instantly calling to mind the 2022’s heartbreaking and heartfelt Aftersun, itself a semi-autobiographical drama that’s told in a non-linear fashion through the eyes of a young girl, Sophy Romvari’s buzzy festival darling Blue Heron is a debut feature worth experiencing, but one that is also flawed narratively, holding it back from becoming the type of unforgettable experience that Aftersun was.

After plying her trade in numerous short film products, Romvari uses her experience growing up in Hungarian immigrant family in Canada in the mid to late 90’s to form the basis of her debut that attempts to deconstruct her experiences growing up in a household that was beholden to the uneasy behaviour of her teenage brother, who was displaying increasingly concerning acts that traumatised her caring parents.

Here portrayed by Eylul Guven as Sasha, a softly spoken and caring soul, Romvari follows Sasha and her family, that includes Iringó Réti as the family’s mother and Ádám Tompa as their father, on a journey to their new home on Vancouver Island, a move that increases the distracting and worrisome attitude of the clans oldest brother/child Jeremy, here played by a menacing Edik Beddoes.

Everything portrayed in Heron and how things play out are all minimalistic by design and choice in Romvari’s film, there’s no big showpiece dramatic moments or segments for her ensemble to chew on awards baiting lines and while in some instances it makes the film more raw and real, there’s also a sense that more emotional pay-off and happenings would’ve benefited the film greatly to stand-out from a crowded marketplace that is filled with family drama films focussed around a troubled family member.

Feeling rather long even at a what should feel brief sub-90 minutes in screentime, there’s a lot of not a lot in the early stages of Heron and we are never really allowed to gain too much insight into the inner workings of Sasha, her siblings or her parents, making it hard to connect on a deeply personal level, which does affect the films final act, one that unravels in some unsuspecting ways thanks to Romvari’s keenness to mess with timelines and moulding together of past and present.

Heron is constantly well-filmed and Romvari’s ability to make her deeply personal tale feel almost like a documentary at times is too be commended but when weighed up against other films cut from the same cloth, Heron pales in comparison, making this unable to stand alongside Aftersun as an unforgettably touching expose of everyday lives haunted by their past and those that have played a part in it.

Final Say –

There’re things to love about Blue Heron and there’s no doubt that Sophy Romvari has announced herself as a filmmaker to keep a close eye on but there’s also ingredients missing from this often-impressive debut that hold it back from reaching grand heights.

3 educational videos out of 5