Joining the likes of previous winners Sometimes I Think About Dying and Riceboy Sleeps, Blue Heron, from director Sophy Romvari, now gets to join the prestigious company of fellow Best Cascadian Film winners. A key mission of our group is to highlight local films and the filmmakers who set stories in our region, a region not bound by country divides but instead of a geographical area that defines our nature.
See the list of other films we nominated for Best Cascadian Films.
To be eligible for the Best Cascadian Film, a film needs to be set in Cascadia (British Columbia, Washington or Oregon), it needs to be shot in Cascadia and needs to be directed by someone who hails from or calls Cascadia home. The film must also have been released in the region during our qualifying period. Not every box needs to be checked to be eligible, but as long as most of them are, and the film feels sufficiently Cascadian enough, it is allowed.
Blue Heron had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland on August 8th 2025, instantly marking it as one of the best Canadian films of the year. The momentum continued when it had its Canadian premiere at TIFF then finally showcasing in our region at VIFF where most members of the CFTCA saw the film, and getting plenty of great reviews from us.
The film was shot across the province of British Columbia, with the bulk of it taking place on Vancouver Island but also showing the landscapes of the lower mainland and Vancouver area. For a film about immigrating to a new country, it was integral to show the new land the family has come to.
The film follows a Hungarian family, who have recently relocated to Canada in the early 90’s. It is mostly told through the lens of youngest daughter Sasha, struggling to make friends and find her place in this new land. She may be struggling, but her oldest sibling Jeremy is having serious issues. He is acting out in ways normal teenagers don’t. His presence starts to become a safety issue not just for the family, but for himself too, with his parents and professionals unsure how to handle him.
The film then jumps forward to introduce us to a now adult Sasha, clearly a stand-in for director Sophy Romvari, a filmmaker exploring the social workers’ case that was her brothers, and what could have been done to help save his life and not fracture her family. As Sasha returns to her old family home on the Island, we get haunting imagery that combines both the past and the present to show the emotional toll that Jeremy had on her life.
The film was a co-production between Canada and Hungary, with the family’s Hungarian heritage an important aspect of the movie. Romvari had difficulties casting the film as much of the dialogue in the first half is Hungarian, but managed to put together an impressive cast including stand out Edik Beddoes, who played Jeremy and was a first time performer. The family aspect was seamless with Iringó Réti and Ádám Tompa anchoring things as the mother and father respectively. Having to split duties as Sasha was Eylul Guven as the younger version and Amy Zimmer as the adult Sasha.
Here are what some of our members had to say about Blue Heron in their reviews of the film.
Where the first half of the film is designed to evoke a specific time and place (1990s Vancouver Island), the latter half adopts a much more documentary style and tone, giving way to magical realism as Sasha delves quite literally into her own memories, grief and guilt. – Matthew Simpson
I loved how Romvari treats recollection as both fiction and documentary — the past reconstructed by an adult filmmaker trying to understand her younger self, or better yet, make sense of her memories. The scrape of a potato peeler at work. Oil crackling in a pan for a bit too long. The rhythmic thump on a wall. All tiny acts of resurrection. – Marta Djordjevic
Romvari’s searching, constantly zooming camera combines self-reflexive movement with dense overstimulation, as seen in her ample use of reflective distortions and multiple planes of motion. In standout sequences such as a breakfast where conversation is routinely interrupted by the rapid-fire sounds and insert shots of a cereal box, these constellatory visual elements suddenly find themselves competing for primacy with equally rich sound design. – Eric Zhu
Much of Romvari’s meditation on childhood trauma is in the memories we make, or think we make, often reflecting on the occurrences later in life and realizing it wasn’t quite what we thought it was. A few innocent conversations between Sasha and her mother on Jeremy’s behavior, Sasha of course doesn’t see anything wrong with Jeremy’s incidents in the beginning, highlight the less-than-wary sibling bond even in the midst of chaotic episodes. – Konnor Beaulier
However, the film’s portrait of a family wrestling with something they are ill-equipped to handle on their own is perhaps more common than most of us realize, especially given the isolation that families—and particularly immigrant families—face when they worry about judgment and scrutiny from others while dealing with difficulties in the home. – Christopher Cross
We are proud to name Blue Heron as the Best Cascadian Film of 2025. A huge congrats to Sophy Romvari, the cast and everyone who worked on the film.
We are also proud to call Foreigner, Train Dreams, Twinless and The Wedding Banquet nominees as well.