Blue Heron Is the Best-Reviewed Film of 2026 and Almost No One Has Seen It

Writer-director Sophy Romvari has made the most acclaimed film of the year with her debut feature Blue Heron. The Canadian drama holds the top spot on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic and is being carefully rolled out on big screens across North America by the selective Janus Films.

The film currently holds a 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 55 critic reviews, and a score of 94 out of 100 on Metacritic, indicating universal acclaim. The numbers are hard to argue with.

Romvari told The Hollywood Reporter that she expected none of this. "I definitely had no expectation of theatrical distribution for an independent Canadian personal drama in the year of 2026. I assumed that it would go straight to streaming," she said. "The feedback you get from the industry as a new filmmaker is just, 'It's a bad time. No one's taking risks.'" And yet here she is.

Blue Heron is described as semi-autobiographical and is rooted in Romvari's own childhood, specifically the reverberations of her troubled eldest brother's sudden death. It is not easy subject matter. The film earns every frame of it.

What Blue Heron is actually about

The film is split into two distinct halves, separated by 20 years. In the first half, Sasha (Eylul Guven) is eight years old. It is the summer of 1998, and her Hungarian immigrant family has just moved to Vancouver Island. The family's fresh start is interrupted by the increasingly dangerous behavior of her older brother, Jeremy (Edik Beddoes).

The transition to the film's second half — a 20-year time jump — is done simply with a phone call: a 1990s landline to an iPhone, between Sasha and her parents. "I really wanted it to feel like one of those conversations that you've had with your parents a thousand times," Romvari told IndieWire. "She asks, 'What do you think is wrong with Jeremy? Why do you think he's like this?' And then, 20 years goes by, and they're still having that same conversation."

With Jeremy now gone, adult Sasha has taken the question up through her work as a documentary filmmaker. It is both a structural choice and an emotional one. Romvari told IndieWire that the thesis of the film is simply this: "having to accept that reality."

The road to get here

The 35-year-old Romvari made her name on the short-film circuit, with raw self-portraits digging into her family's archives and traumas. Her life up until now, she said, has been a mix of part-time jobs, editing, and grants.

She started casting before she had the money for production. Following a summer shoot, Romvari camped out in editor Kurt Walker's living room through the Toronto winter, then got a job as a supervisor at her local movie theater to make ends meet during post-production. "I obviously ran out of money, so I just was like, 'Can I work here?'" She still works there part-time.

The film had its world premiere at the 78th Locarno Film Festival in August 2025, where Romvari won the Swatch First Feature Award. It then screened at TIFF, Vancouver, San Sebastián, and more than a dozen other festivals internationally.

Janus Films released Blue Heron in select cinemas beginning April 17, 2026, with a nationwide expansion currently underway. Upon acquiring the U.S. rights, Romvari said in a statement: "It is without exaggeration to say that Janus Films has brought the majority of the greatest films of all time to audiences. For my debut feature to be brought into this legacy is far beyond a dream come true."

A nationwide expansion is ongoing throughout May.