Blue Heron (in-person & online)

Eylul Guven, Amy Zimmer, Ádám Tompa, Iringó Réti

In the 1990s, eight-year-old Sasha (Eylul Guven) is settling into her Hungarian family’s new life on Vancouver Island when her older stepbrother, Jeremy (Edik Beddoes), begins acting out in self-destructive ways. Sasha watches as her family try to support Jeremy through his mysterious problems and increasingly volatile behaviour – sending him to different therapists and schools – but it seems nothing will help.

Expanding on her acclaimed short Still Processing, Sophy Romvari’s lyrical, heartrending feature debut draws on her own childhood experiences. A sensitive, beautifully shot and structured study of family trauma and grief that recalls Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun, it interrogates the pain and complexity of trying to understand our loved ones contemporaneously and in reverse and the haunting shifts in perspective afforded by time.