Critics Campus 2026 participant Guuleed Ismail speaks to Sophy Romvari about travel, technology, and the large and small elements of her own life that have found their way into her emotionally devastating debut feature.

The discontinuous, subjective nature of memory lends itself to the process of film editing. We connect the dots of our childhood through personal media, and through a constantly changing temporal lens. Sophy Romvari’s debut feature film Blue Heron follows Sasha (played by Eylul Guven as a child), a young girl whose Hungarian-speaking family has recently moved to a new home in Vancouver Island, Canada. The unsafe behaviour of her eldest brother, Jeremy (Edik Beddoes), becomes a point of constant tension and investigation by Sasha’s parents, as well as herself. Romvari’s autofiction is the work of a filmmaker fascinated by film’s ability to reveal our past and inform our present selves.

Blue Heron highlights the intentions of a filmmaker. The father captures all of these moments on film and on a camcorder. It could be quite tender at times, but also could be about cataloguing Jeremy’s behaviour. How did you go about balancing the two?

I was trying to find different ways to show the father (Ádám Tompa) trying to connect, from a distance. Photography and music are his own interests, and he’s engaging with the children from that perspective. It shows some of his limitations, emotionally, but also a desire to engage, which lends itself to the formal approach in which [Blue Heron] was shot. Intimacy and removal are occurring [simultaneously]. It’s incidental that this is now the material Sasha is looking back on, trying to piece things together. That’s [also] true to my experience – having access to this archive of material that my dad shot, then trying to use that to understand things I don’t necessarily have access to.

Jeremy had his own fantasy world building in his room; so, in a way, he had something to share, but this wasn’t something he was able to give away to his family. There’s empowerment in allowing people to do that even if you’re not communicating with words of emotion.

Totally. The film is very much about different modes of communication, and attempts at communication. A lot of my films focus on how we try to connect through technology and media. I bookend the film with this image of the iPhone, a signifier of connection and isolation in the way that we live in the world now. That’s true to my experience as someone who grew up with a shift in technology that really occurred in my childhood, going from computers that allow you to connect to [others] to having a phone in our pockets at all times. That’s truly a millennial experience. I’m not one to shy away from acknowledging [the smartphone] as a big part of our reality: it’s a huge hindrance to our sense of intimacy and connection, how it’s completely shaped the world and our lives. [The film is] opening and closing with that acknowledgement.

There is a scene with Sasha [played by Amy Zimmer as an adult] in the bathroom watching His Girl Friday (1940). What do you feel that moment represents for her, and how did you come to choose that film for the scene?

It is a favourite film [of mine]. I wanted to show her fascination and engagement with film history, and that it’s part of who she is. She’s doing something intimate, watching a film in the bathtub. This is just for her.

The practical reason was that the rights [for His Girl Friday] lapsed and entered the public domain earlier than intended – that’s why it’s released through Criterion! So that helps. I chose that clip specifically because it’s about [Hildy, played by Rosalind Russell] investigating as a journalist and trying to find her way in the world. There’s a lot of pushback against her trying to access information, and it mirrors [Sasha’s] own experiences.

Blue Heron

You cast your own dog in the film. In the vignettes of Sasha’s childhood, there’s one specific cat that appeared a few times. What was the thinking behind having the cat during those moments, then having Sasha own a dog in the second half of the film?

The cat was a local in the neighbourhood who would show up to set every day. As the crew were on lunchbreak, people would be petting him, and he became a fixture of the crew. I don’t really know who owns him, but we decided to include him because of my production designer, Victoria [Furuya]. She studied a lot of my family’s photography archive and pointed out that this cat was exactly the same cat in all of those photos from that specific [time]. I had a tabby cat that looked just like [him] named Tiger. It was this very ghostly, bizarre situation where I had no choice but to include him. It’s autobiographically accurate, but not something that I chose.

You’ve talked about how being pragmatic worked for the nature of Blue Heron. Were there moments where, in trying to be practical, you couldn’t quite get to a certain vision of a scene?

There are a few scenes in the film that required stunts: on the roof, as well as the pool. Those [scenes] were challenging because safety is the priority. I still feel they depict what I was trying to express emotionally, but maybe I would have approached it differently if I had more access to shoot them without limitations. That was an important challenge [for] a first feature. You have to make those decisions with safety as the priority.

It’s been over a year that you’ve been on this world tour for Blue Heron. With the geography of home being a key component for the film, how has travelling changed your perspective on home and geography in filmmaking?

I miss it [laughs]. I miss home. I miss having a sense of stability in where I wake up, how I feed myself and go through day-to-day life. But at the same time, it’s such an insane privilege to get to travel around the world, share this film and meet people.

It’s difficult to find balance when that’s your life. [Everything] is so temporary. I wanted to support the film’s release as much as I possibly could, but I’ve reached my own limitations and ceilings I didn’t know existed before and found new barriers of human capability. I’ve often described myself as the little yellow guy on Google Maps that they just pick up, drag and drop in different places. I just get dropped, and I’m like: “Oh, I’m in Germany!”

Blue Heron screens in cinemas on Saturday 15, Tuesday 18, Wednesday 19 and Thursday 20 August as part of the MIFF 2026 program.

The above has been written as part of MIFF’s Critics Campus program. The opinion expressed is the author’s and does not necessarily reflect that of the festival.