Blue Heron

A masterful debut, this depiction of a young girl whose family is contending with a challenging older sibling weaves autobiographical and documentary elements seamlessly into a singularly poignant package. Sasha’s family emigrated from Hungary to Vancouver Island in the 1990s. Life there is pretty bucolic—outdoor swims, watching cartoons—but there are outbursts of increasingly odd, antisocial behavior from her older brother Jeremy. Sasha takes these moments in stride but notes her parents’ conversations in their native tongue that suggest something more serious and worrisome is happening. Director Sophy Romvari captures the sights and sounds of adolescence impeccably and, when the film employs a brave narrative gambit around its halfway point, she ineffably delineates the blur of memory and the tragic inability to avert crisis where one’s personal history is concerned. The extremely intentional camerawork by Maya Bankovic is vibrant but unobtrusive, observing the family (and especially Sasha) with a gentle but probing eye. —Rod Armstrong