Blue Heron

In the 1990s, a family moves from Hungary to Vancouver Island, an island off the west coast of Canada. With its clear skies, endless countryside and beautiful beaches, it seems as though eight-year-old Sasha, the youngest of the family, her three brothers and her parents have landed in an idyll. At first glance, everything is going well, but beneath the surface, things are simmering: Sasha’s older stepbrother Jeremy is struggling with himself, and his difficult, unpredictable behaviour casts a dark shadow over the family’s happiness. Sasha doesn’t understand what’s troubling him, but she tries to reach out to him anyway. Twenty years later, now a filmmaker, Sasha looks back on that period.

In this widely acclaimed and now multi-award-winning feature film debut, Canadian director Sophy Romvari tells a story she wrote herself about the capricious nature of memories and how childhood traumas have a lasting impact; it is the story of her own childhood.