Blue Heron

Synopsis

Vancouver Island, the late 1990s: a Hungarian couple and their four children settle into their new home, looking for a fresh start. Through the eyes of the youngest, Sasha, the littler siblings play and crash around their new world, making friends with the neighborhood kids and exploring the wilds of their new backyard. But their oldest brother, the teenage Jeremy, remains aloof and distant, his behavior becoming increasingly troubling. Overhearing concerned whispers between her parents and bearing witness to things she doesn’t quite understand, Sasha begins to sense that something dark is going on with Jeremy.

The evasiveness of memory is at the center of Sophy Romvari’s deeply personal debut: a form-defying experiment delving into family history. A poetic blend of lyrically childlike narrative, inquisitive documentary elements, and mystical reimaginings of real events come together to make sense of a young girl’s complex memories of her older brother’s troubled youth.