There are filmmakers to watch, and then there are filmmakers who arrive on the scene fully formed. Canadian director Sophy Romvari firmly falls in that latter, rarer category. 

She built up something of a cult following among younger cinephiles through a rich body of short work, including her thesis film, Still Processing, which examined the unresolved grief held by her family over the death of her two older brothers. This notion also forms the emotional bedrock on which her feature debut, Blue Heron, is built. 

Blue Heron is a lyrical study of the twisting nature of memory and the lasting impact of childhood trauma, with an authenticity and sensitivity that marks the arrival of a truly distinctive voice. The setup is deceptively quiet: a Hungarian-Canadian family relocates to Vancouver Island in the nineties, struggling to cope with the eldest son's increasingly dangerous behavior, as seen through the eyes of the eight-year-old daughter.

Romvari is not interested in a straightforward family drama: much of the film's knockout emotional punch is tied to bold structural gambits that arrive late into the runtime — and that's about as much detail as we're willing to divulge, because the less you know going in, the better. What we can tell you is that this is one of the most quietly devastating debut features in recent memory: personal cinema at its most precise and at its most brave.

Ty Burr "How exhilarating it is to come across a filmmaker whose eye is fresh, who views the familiar things of the world with a clarity and from angles that make them feel seen as if for the first time."

NY Times "Blue Heron becomes something truly masterful."