Blue Heron

Blue Heron (2026) is Sophy Romvari's first feature and comes largely out of her own childhood. The late nineties. A family of six who emigrated from Hungary settle into a new house on Vancouver Island. We see all of it through Sasha, the youngest child. The fresh start does not last: the behaviour of Jeremy, the eldest, becomes steadily more dangerous. What the film does is refuse to explain mental illness by naming it. A child understands that something is wrong but cannot say what. The adults discuss it among themselves and not with her. The silence in the house grows. Romvari builds this slowly and without commentary. Romvari was known before this for a short called Still Processing, about going through family photographs and home videos after the deaths of two of her brothers. Blue Heron is the long form of the same wound. It won the first feature award at Locarno and became one of the most discussed independent films of 2026. It runs 91 minutes. Good for: quiet independent drama, immigrant family stories, and autobiographical cinema. Less good for: mental illness and domestic tension are the central subject, the pace is deliberately slow, and the film does not supply answers.