Victoria-born filmmaker’s feature debut Blue Heron earns national acclaim
Published 10:00 am Saturday, April 11, 2026
It’s a summer evening on Vancouver Island beach in the late 1990s. A few kids are seen playing on the beach, making sand castles and collecting seashells with their parents.
Feature film Blue Heron shows a family of six from Hungary settling into their new life on the Island. It dives deep into the internal dynamics of the family, and the story is revealed through the eyes of the youngest child, Sasha.
Blue Heron, an autobiographical feature of writer and director Sophy Romvari, is nominated for seven awards, including best feature film at the Canadian Screen Awards.
Romvari, who was born in Victoria, spent much of her childhood on Gabriola Island and later in Nanaimo and now lives in Toronto. Victoria later became a place she returned to during the summer and where she collected fond memories.
Romvari told Victoria News that Blue Heron is closely tied to her early life and memories of the Island.
Romvari began her career making independent short films after studying film in Vancouver. She entered the film industry with her short film Pumpkin Movie, premiering at True/False Film Fest in 2017. Her short film Norman Norman premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2018. Romvari also directed In Dog Years for CBC Short Docs in 2019.
Blue Heron is her feature debut, which had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival, where it won the Swatch First Feature Award. It had its North American premiere at TIFF in the Centrepiece section, where it was awarded the Best Canadian Discovery Award.
The film is now nominated for Canadian Screen Awards in best feature film, as well as best screenwriting, direction, editing, casting, original screenplay and supporting actor categories.
“It’s an honour as a Canadian to have the Canadian film industry recognize the film with these nominations. For me as a director, it’s mostly exciting to see my collaborators being nominated and to see their work being appreciated,” she said.
The feature film was shot in several places on Vancouver Island.
“It was really important for me in this film to show Vancouver Island and to show the landscape of Vancouver Island.”
Blue Heron is autobiographical, drawn from her own experiences. It’s told from a child’s perspective and an adult’s reflection, as the main character tries to understand the difficult time her family was going through during their early years in Canada.
Talking about her experience of filmmaking, Romvari said it can be a difficult career because of the instability of the industry. It takes a lot of motivation to be a filmmaker, she added.
“But I feel very lucky to be a filmmaker because I’ve gotten to work with amazing people and tell stories that I care about and connect with a lot of people. But the struggle is just that it’s a very challenging thing to do economically.”