At least a couple of times a year, a filmmaker somewhere in the world will point a child’s camcorder at their own past and dare you not to think of Aftersun. Sophy Romvari’s Blue Heron earns the comparison more than most. It’s the late 1990s, and eight-year-old Sasha is watching her Hungarian family try to put down roots on Vancouver Island, taping the whole uneasy summer on a VHS camcorder that ends up being the film’s real narrator. The nostalgia is the best thing here. The swimsuits, the trampoline, the specific ache of being the immigrant kid who just wants to fit in, all of it lands.
The trouble is intent. Romvari can’t always decide whether she’s making an atmospheric mood piece or a coming-of-age story about a family quietly buckling under the oldest son’s behavior, and she doesn’t fully pull off either. When the film lets the summer breathe, it’s lovely. When it reaches for a plot, it loses the thread. As a debut, though, it announces a filmmaker worth watching.
"It’s a memory-film that captures inner life with physical style: patience, speed, precision, and breathtaking leaps."
— Richard Brody
"Despite feeling like a fairly typical genre exercise in some ways, it's a film that resists easy answers and categorisation."
— Jenna Mahale
In the late 1990s, eight-year-old Sasha and her family relocate to a new home on Vancouver Island, but their fresh start is interrupted by increasingly dangerous behavior from the eldest son, Jeremy. As events escalate, the parents face a difficult choice, and the formative summer unfolds through the youngest child's eyes.
