Blue Heron review – sombre and sophisticated portrait of childhood trauma in 1990s Canada

A Hungarian immigrant family grapple with oppositional defiant disorder in Sophy Romvari’s intimate and unshowy debut feature The past folds into the present in this very fine debut feature from Canadian film-maker Sophy Romvari, which has grown in my mind on a second viewing, having first come across it at last year’s Locarno film festival. It is an autobiographical, in fact autofictional, movie imbued with a kind of quietism, a refusal to amplify its real-life drama and tragedy. It doesn’t ...

By Peter Bradshaw