Keswick Film Festival

Synopsis

"A shoo-in for any 'best of the year' list, Sophy Romvari's debut film is a stop-you-in-your tracks debut about Jeremy, a young man with oppositional defiant disorder, and the parents who struggle to support him... Set amid the Spielbergian suburbs and pine coves of Canada's Vancouver Island in the early '90s, it follows an unnamed immigrant Hungarian family as they settle into their new life. The isolation that comes with being a ferry ride from the mainland is quickly magnified by their increasing sense of being left to manage an impossible situation alone. Their son's erratic behaviour has the police at the door and their neighbours twitching their curtains. Things are smashed. At one point, he climbs onto the roof and threatens to jump" - Phil de Semlyen, Time Out.

Based on Sophy Romvari's own childhood, and filmed mainly through the eyes of Sasha, an eight year-old girl, 'Blue Heron' follows the trials and tribulations of this family whose lives are dominated by the eldest child, Jeremy. The film is split into parts, the first sees the family settling in to their new home with Sasha being upset by her brother's behaviour. "Romvari shoots the family with a long, unobtrusive lens that lends a sense of authenticity to both the performances and to the texture of the domestic world depicted...In the second section, we are jolted into the present. Adult Sasha is a film-maker trying to make sense of a period of her life that her eight-year-old self failed to grasp. Borrowing the language of documentary, Romvari has her alter ego consult with a panel of social workers to learn what diagnosis and support her brother might have received had he been born two decades later" - Wendy Ide, Observer.

There is a third section which brings the past and present together and brings the film to a climax...but you are going to have to come and see it to find out what that is...see you there!