Sophy Romvari’s affecting and intelligent feature debut confirms her status as one of Canada’s most exceptional emerging filmmakers. Blue Heron is formally inventive and acutely personal, a re-creation of childhood joys embedded in a more troubling story of a family’s growing crisis.

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. At wit’s end, their parents are presented with a shattering choice. Blue Heron is a lyrical and profound testament to the things we carry with us, masterfully chronicling the haze of a languid summer and the hyaline clarity of the moments that defined it.