Reel Beach: Award-winning drama Blue Heron recently screened at the Fox Theatre

By BERNIE FLETCHER

It’s not every day that a filmmaker gets to screen their movie at the same movie theatre where they work.

The Fox Theatre’s “very own” Sophy Romvari presented her acclaimed debut feature film, Blue Heron, on three evenings followed by a Question and Answer session with an appreciative audience.

Blue Heron blends fact and fiction, past and present, childhood moments and adult memories.

In the late 1990’s a Hungarian-Canadian family settles into a new home on Vancouver Island. Through the eyes of eight-year old Sasha we see idyllic nature contrasted with the family trauma caused by her older brother Jeremy’s disruptive behaviour. Sasha is an innocent witness to events she can’t fully understand. As an adult she turns her camera to her past.

Romvari has made short films for “many, many” years.

It’s difficult to receive funding for independent films, but “in Canada we are very lucky. I feel very privileged because I got to make exactly the film I wanted to make because I made it here.”

The writer/director explained how she found her title:

“There’s an arts market down the street in the Beaches. They sell local artists’ work and I bought this stained glass blue heron which I just felt compelled toward. And I liked it, I brought it home and I put it in my window. I knew I wanted there to be an object that the young Sasha brings into her adulthood, an object that has some kind of emotional connection for her and a talisman of a sort of time travel.”

Romvari joked that her memories are “unreliable”. We can’t change the past, but we can try to understand it.

In the film, Jeremy gives Sasha a blue heron key chain. “I wanted to show the thing that she’s holding onto from her past physically…and then I found all these beautiful connections with the bird itself,” said Romvari.

When Romvari was finishing up her film and running out of money, the Fox Theatre offered her a job as a supervisor. She lives nearby and the theatre has become her “second home”, her “second living room”.

For Romvari it’s “very special to screen this film here…the greatest privilege of my life making this movie to share with people. Playing it at the movie theatre I work at…it’s great. What a dream!”

Blue Heron has won accolades and prizes at film festivals around the world as well as the Best Canadian Discovery Award at TIFF 2025 and the Toronto Film Critics Award. It is nominated for seven Canadian Screen Awards, including Best Motion Picture (May 31).

Watch for Blue Heron to open in wide release on April 24. In Toronto the opening night will be hosted by David Cronenberg.
Romvari added that it is more important than ever to support local arts and independent theatres.

The Fox has survived since 1914. Director Norman Jewison grew up in the Beach seeing movies at local “nabes”. In 1949 there were 26 neighbourhood movie houses in the east end between the Don River and Victoria Park Avenue. Now you could call the Fox “the last picture show” in the Beach.

“I’m really excited to make another film,” said Romvari.

She is a talent to watch. The next time you are at the Fox, say hello. You may even buy a ticket from Sophy herself!