Blue Heron
A delicate Canadian family drama about a Hungarian-Canadian family who migrate to idyllic Vancouver Island in the 1990s. Their new start is disrupted by the increasingly unpredictable behaviour of one of the children.
Within a re-creation of childhood joys lies a more troubling story of a family’s growing crisis in Sophy Romvari’s affecting and acutely personal feature debut. The graceful opening scenes depict a period of transition for a Hungarian-Canadian family of six as they adapt to a new home on Vancouver Island. Seen from the perspective of the youngest daughter Sasha, events range from the comfortably ordinary – family beach days and park outings, summer afternoon fun with trampolines and garden hoses – to those that take on a darker cast as the extent of the issues concerning one family member become clear. In sequences set years later, we witness an effort to grapple with this difficult past.
Fascinating and moving as a meditation on grief, memory, and love, Blue Heron sees Sophy Romvari blur the borders between fiction and documentary in ways that aren’t soon forgotten. (source: www.tiff.net)
Written by R.S.