Inside 'Blue Heron,' the Most Acclaimed Film of 2026 So Far

Behind the scenes of 'Blue Heron'

Robb McCaghren

Sophy Romvari tends to keep her expectations “tempered.” From the inception of her debut feature, Blue Heron, the Canadian native stayed focused on what she could control: the experience of making her deeply autobiographical film on her own terms. She didn’t have much hopes for a splashy acquisition out of a festival bow, much less a months-long press tour from there.

“I definitely had no expectation of theatrical distribution for an independent Canadian personal drama in the year of 2026. I assumed that it would go straight to streaming,” she says. “The feedback you get from the industry as a new filmmaker is just, ‘It’s a bad time. No one’s taking risks.’”

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And yet here Romvari sits on a Hollywood restaurant patio, struggling to find time for bites of her chopped salad between thoughtful answers to questions about her unlikely indie sensation. Blue Heron did not, it turns out, go straight to streaming; on the contrary, it’s being carefully rolled out on big screens across North America by the selective Janus Films. Romvari’s drama is the best-reviewed feature of the year, per both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, and has already won awards at festivals ranging from Locarno (where it world premiered) to Toronto (where Janus snatched up the rights).

Even now, though, on the verge of Blue Heron’s Los Angeles release, Romvari prefers to keep things in perspective. “My life up until now has been a mix of part-time jobs, editing and grants — and that’s how I’ve made an income,” she says. “The entire goal is: Can I build a career in which it’s sustainable to continue to make work?”

The 35-year-old Romvari made her name on the short-film circuit, with often raw self-portraits digging into her family’s archives and traumas. She grew up on Vancouver Island with her parents and three brothers, who’d emigrated from Hungary just before she was born; coming to terms with the deaths of two of her older brothers makes up the acclaimed Still Processing, while Norman, Norman centers on her beloved older dog as she grapples with his mortality. The memoiristic project reaches a kind of culmination in Blue Heron, which is not a documentary — but is still firmly rooted in Romvari’s own past, and specifically the reverberations of her troubled eldest brother’s sudden death.

Amy Zimmer and Edik Beddoes in Blue Heron.

Brooke Sovdi

“I feel like a different person after having made this movie because now I feel like I can move through the world knowing that I’ve done everything I can to unpack and understand that period of my life and of my family’s life,” Romvari says. “I’ve explored it artistically in a way that allows me to move forward in a way that I don’t think I could have, had I not done this.”

The Vancouver-set Blue Heron artfully plays in two timelines, first as an intimate family drama seen through the eyes of young Sasha (Eylul Guven), Romvari’s stand-in, as she observes the growing tension between her mother (Iringó Réti) and her brother Jeremy (Edik Beddoes), who seems increasingly withdrawn and isolated. Around halfway, we jump forward to the aftermath of Jeremy’s death, with an adult Sasha (now played by Amy Zimmer) working as a filmmaker and trying to piece together what happened and why. These two sections meet, in a sense, in Blue Heron’s moving and surprising climax, which recreates a core scene from Romvari’s childhood — or at least seems to, on the surface.

“Watching this movie, someone would expect that this is the most dramatic thing that’s ever happened in my life — but this one occurrence, this conversation, I do not remember that happening,” she says. “People might see this film beat by beat as my life, and I have to accept that as someone who’s made myself vulnerable as a filmmaker.”

In reality, Blue Heron is a more complex enterprise — emotionally delicate and rigorous, certainly, but also unusually controlled for a debut. This was by design, as Romvari exercised patience to make this moment count, refining her visual style and tightening her narrative approach. She was also working with a ton of cinematic references, if not overtly, that flow through her singular expression.

When asked to name touchstones, she sips her Diet Coke, laughs and pulls out her phone, her salad still mostly untouched. “I’m so grateful to Letterboxd. Letterboxd is my brain,” she says. She names the detailed master shots of Robert A