It is increasingly difficult for debut feature filmmakers to cut through at European film festivals like Locarno, where much of the oxygen, particularly in the press, is sucked up by A-list stars who pop into town for honorary awards and presentations.
But there’s always an exception to the rule, which is perhaps best demonstrated this year by Sophy Romvari, a Canadian filmmaker who has cultivated something of a cult following among younger cinephiles.
“It’s probably because I’m very online,” Romvari jokes of her digital popularity as she sits down with Deadline on the ground in Locarno.
Romvari is indeed a personality on social media with over 14,000 followers on X, but she has also drawn critical acclaim for her rich collection of short projects that have toured the international circuit, like 2020’s Still Processing, which played TIFF and was acquired by Mubi. In 2022, the Criterion Channel launched a retrospective of her work featuring eight titles, which ran until earlier this year.
This evening, Romvari screens Blue Heron, her debut feature, here in Locarno.
A rare Canadian-Hungarian co-production, the film tells the story of a Canadian-Hungarian family of six who, in the late 1990s, settle into their new home on Vancouver Island, where internal dynamics slowly begin to reveal themselves through the experiences of the youngest child, Sasha. The family’s fresh start is interrupted by the increasingly dangerous behavior of Jeremy, the family’s oldest child.
Romvari directs from a screenplay she wrote and produced alongside Ryan Bobkin, Sara Wylie, and Gábor Osváth. MoreThan Films is handling international sales.
Below, Romvari speaks about building the unique Canadian-European production behind her debut film, how she managed to land the film’s period setting on a micro-budget, and why independent filmmaking is becoming what she describes as increasingly unsustainable in Canada.
DEADLINE: Sophy, what’s your filmmaking background?
SOPHY ROMVARI: I did traditional film school. And then I started making short films. I made a lot of shorts. I maxed out on shorts. When they were on Criterion, I realized that’s as far as they’d go.
DEADLINE: There’s such a big short film system in Canada. Canadian filmmakers seem to make a lot of shorts. Why is that?
ROMVARI: Canada has a history of short filmmaking because of the National Film Board, which was big in the 80s. Canada was winning loads of Academy Awards. But I’m interested in the international perception of Canadian cinema. So much of it is often trying to emulate an American style without an American budget or American star system.
DEADLINE: Really? I immediately think about the Quebec films, which are very different.
ROMVARI: They have their own funding system, which is very different and makes all the difference. Those films don’t have to make back their money in the same way American movies do. If you package a film in the U.S., it’s usually based on a star’s box office power, whereas in Canada, they’ll give you a couple of hundred thousand, but the expectation is that no one will ever see the film. Canada is somewhat a socialist country, so there isn’t this capitalist strain on art, which is nice, but there’s also a lack of expectation.
DEADLINE: In France, they measure a film’s success by the admissions instead of cash. We should probably all start doing that.
ROMVARI: Yeah, with this film, I care more about how it does at festivals and how it’s received within the critical conversation than anything. If we end up doing a release, which will probably still be small no matter what, that is just an opportunity for me to meet more people and discuss the film. I don’t want it to just show in a bunch of empty theatres in Canada. I’d rather it screen for festival audiences that are engaged and have an appetite for it. Because I know, I work in a movie theatre. That is my job right now.
DEADLINE: Which theatre?
ROMVARI: The Fox in Toronto. Working in a movie theatre and releasing my own film at the same time has been crazy and ironic.
DEADLINE: Do you think working in a theatre and seeing what does well with audiences shaped how you made this film?
ROMVARI: It didn’t shape how I made the film. It made me very aware that even if a film stars huge celebrities, the theatres are not full. The films that are doing well where I work are retrospectives. We showed McCabe & Mrs. Miller, and it was packed. We showed Kurosawa’s Ran, packed again. These are the films people are into. But you show something new, like Eddington, and the theatre is empty.
DEADLINE: It’s the same in London and here in Locarno the retrospective section is probably the most popular.
ROMVARI: Yeah, it’s always great to see a sold-out screening. Working at The Fox is a great part-time job, but I’m also at the peak of my career artistically. But then, at the bottom financially. Hopefully, the two balance out eventually. It’s important to say this, though, because I think there’s an illusion that if your film is doing well, you’re financially benefiting, but that’s incorrect. I’m going to be traveling with this film for the next few months, but I don’t know how. Right now, I’m subletting my apartment to be here.
DEADLINE: After reading about your previous works the ‘Blue Heron’ seems very in line with your philosophical interest in cinema’s relationship to memory. Where did the idea for the film come from?
ROMVARI: Yeah, my short films were all emotionally driven movies that were processing different aspects of my experiences. I didn’t want to make a feature until I had an idea worth exploring in feature length. People often make that mistake. I began working on the script in 2021. It’s quite autobiographical, but it is ultimately fiction. Some of it is memory, some of it is things that I think I remember. Some of it is complete fiction. When I watch it, it feels like a simulacrum of my life.
DEADLINE: There are some wonderful period elements in this film. Can you talk about building a production to accurately depict the 1990s.
ROMVARI: The period element really makes you act cautiously when it comes to spending money. For example, you put money into the family’s car, which we actually got because one of my crew members saw a woman driving and asked her if she wanted her car to be in a movie. She said ‘sure,’ and we just exchanged it with her. That’s how we got the car. There were so many little things like that. The family computer is the casing of a Windows 95 with an LCD screen.
DEADLINE: And where did you find these actors? I assume it was difficult, specifically considering the parts of the story that require Hungarian dialog.
ROMVARI: It was very intensive, because Hungarians are very specific. The dialect is super specific. The film didn’t start out as a co-production, but it became one, which is insane because the budget definitely isn’t co-production level. We had a Hungarian casting director, who found the two parents, who are both Hungarian. And then we had another casting director in Vancouver who found all the children.
DEADLINE: So how did it become a co-production?
ROMVARI: One of my producers, Ryan, met our co-producer Gábor at the Berlin Film Festival, and they began to talk about the possibility. Both countries have grants. They have the Hungarian Film Institute, and we have Telefilm, so it’s 30% Hungarian, 70% Canadian. We did all the film’s post-production in Hungary.
DEADLINE: What was the budget?
ROMVARI: It was 500,000 Canadian, which is about 350,000 USD. With bringing actors over from Europe and all the period elements, it shouldn’t have worked.
DEADLINE: Why do you think you were able to make it work?
ROMVARI: A lot of rigorous planning and knowing how to do things efficiently through years of experience making short films. For example, we didn’t move the camera. We didn’t have a dolly. We just had a Zoom lens. Everything was shot on a zoom lens. My cinematographer, Maya Bankovic, was the most experienced crew member. It was my production designer’s first film. My editor was very new too. There were just a lot of miracles along the way that allowed this to be made.
DEADLINE: In your director’s note, you say the film is interested in exploring the “imperfections of depicting memory in cinema”. What are those imperfections to you?
ROMVARI: Because I make personal work, there’s always a question of how personal it is. What’s real and what’s not? To me, cinema is inherently fictional, even documentary films. By committing the film to being fiction, I can work more freely. With a documentary, there’s an expectation that you’re being delivered the truth, which I disagree with. I went to a lot of documentary festivals with my shorts and saw many hybrid films. I find the conversation around truth in cinema very fascinating. One of my favorite documentaries is Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, and it’s just the perfect representation of that falsehood in cinema.
DEADLINE: There are so many great Canadian filmmakers out here right now getting work made. I think about someone like Chandler Levack, whom I interviewed recently alongside Cameron Bailey. They described the scene in Canada right now as fast-growing. Where do you see things going in the future?
ROMVARI: Growing up in Canada, there’s an understanding that if you make it, you move to the United States. Chandler has succeeded in that and is the very rare instance of a Canadian filmmaker making three films within three years. In Canada, you usually make a film and seven years later, you may make another or go into TV directing. It’s rare to make more films because, although the funding system is there, it’s flawed. Kazik Radwanski, a Toronto filmmaker, has a model that’s working for him. All of his films have similarly small budgets, and he maintains creative control, but the films don’t grow in scale. Those are the two paths. I don’t know which path I want to go down because I want to continue to direct my own work, but I also need to make a living. It’s a difficult balance. It seems unsustainable to stay in Canada and continue making movies.
DEADLINE: Who or what do you think needs to be more involved to make things more sustainable?
ROMVARI: European co-productions. I don’t think you can make Canadian films that will do well in the American system without America being part of the financial structure. It’s very difficult to have your film be seen in America without a celebrity attached because it’s such a celebrity-driven industry. I’m very curious how this film will be perceived by American audiences.
