- Female Filmmakers in Focus: Sophy Romvari on “Blue Heron” (April 17, 2026)
An emotionally autobiographical work in line with the filmmaker’s previous short films, which straddle the world of creative nonfiction, Sophy Romvari’s debut feature film “Blue Heron” mines her family’s own painful history to craft a tender film that expands the potential of what a coming-of-age film can be.
Blurring the lines between the past and the present, the film follows eight-year-old Sasha (Eylul Guven), who, along with her Hungarian immigrant parents and her three siblings, has relocated to Vancouver Island in the late 1990s. As the family adjusts to their new surroundings, her oldest brother Jeremy (Edik Beddoes) begins to display potentially dangerous behavioral issues.
A Canadian-Hungarian filmmaker based in Toronto, Romvari has spent the last decade making powerful, personal films that explore the tenuous connections we all have with time and with memory itself. Romvari studied film at Capilano University and holds an MFA from York University. Her highly acclaimed short film “Still Processing,” which was her thesis film at York, examines the unresolved grief held by her family over the death of her two older brothers. Her short films have screened at the Toronto International Film Festival, Hot Docs, Sheffield Doc/Fest, and True/False. They have been featured as a collection on Criterion Channel and in a retrospective at the Museum of Moving Image.
Writing out of the film’s world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival, where it won the Swatch First Feature Award, Robert Daniels praised the unique structure of “Blue Heron,” finding that it was made with a “startlingly raw vulnerability” and that it “hits with such precision, it could break you open from the inside.” A few weeks later, the film had its Canadian premiere as part of the Centrepiece program at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the Best Canadian Discovery Award.
“Blue Heron” has played festivals all over the world, including the Vancouver International Film Festival, the International Film Festival of India, the Bangkok International Film Festival, and the San Sebastián Film Festival, and was named the Best First Feature and awarded the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award from the Toronto Film Critics Association.
For this month’s Female Filmmakers in Focus column, RogerEbert.com spoke to Romvari over Zoom about how images and image-making impact our experience of time and memory, why making short films is the best way to build up your filmmaking prowess, and being part of a lineage of women who use personal filmmaking as a way to reflect on issues of society at large.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
I first saw your film at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall. I didn’t know the plot going in, and it quietly destroyed me because when I was a teenager, I also had emotional issues, and I ended up in foster care. I was like Sasha’s brother. I was like Jeremy. So, watching this film brought up a lot of emotions and made me think about what it was like for my brother to be my sibling while I was going through all of that.
I think this is a movie that taps into some deeply unnameable emotions. You’ve taken this film around to several festivals, so I wondered if you’ve had other people come up to you and talk about how it touched them in similar ways, even though it is so personal to your experience?
Thank you for sharing that story with me. It means a lot to me, especially when people who relate more to Jeremy than to any other character connect with the film. Because I think that was the intangible thing that I couldn’t know. When you’re representing an experience outside yourself, you don’t know how it’s gonna be reflected for other people. So it means a lot that you felt a reflection in that experience.
It has actually been a very heavy film to release, for obvious reasons, but also because of the reactions from the people who have been watching it. I feel like I’m carrying a lot of emotional response, which is such a gift, but it’s also very heavy, because it almost comes with guilt, in a way. I’m seeing people’s very emotional reactions, and people are telling me very difficult things that maybe were locked inside them, and to make something that allows people to have that response is a privilege. But also as a human being, I’m like, whoa.
I feel like the only other film that hits on this deep of a level, and I mean this as the highest of compliments, is Spielberg’s “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence.” Every time I watch that movie. I don’t know what it evokes, but I have to, like, hold myself in a corner for a few days. I had the exact same experience both times I watched your film.
“A.I.” makes me sob every time too. I just re-watched it, actually. I wouldn’t say it was a reference, but there’s a spiritual connection. It’s funny because I believe it was the first film I ever saw in a movie theater.
Wow.
Because I grew up on a really tiny island, not Vancouver Island, another smaller island where there wasn’t a movie theater. So it wasn’t until I was older that I started going to movie theaters. I watched that film with my mom. So it definitely had an effect on me, and Spielberg in general. The way he shows life and the world from a child’s perspective. “A.I.” is one of the best movies.
I really tried to focus on depicting my point of view as a sibling, because that was a perspective I hadn’t seen this kind of story be told from, and it also was the perspective I felt I had the most authorship over, and I didn’t want to speak for my brother or my parents. But obviously, I can’t depict my own experience in a vacuum. So, it’s been interesting to see people respond in relation to all of the different characters like this. There are the siblings who respond, having related to that experience; there are the Jeremys; and then there are the parents.
The parents are really difficult. Those conversations have been quite difficult. I’ve met quite a few people who’ve lost children. Or siblings who have lost siblings. There is a communal catharsis that I feel occurs. During Q&As, people are vulnerable and open up about these, like, really difficult things, which is so beautiful. But as a filmmaker, I don’t always have the tools to respond the way I want to. I know they’re responding to the movie, but I want to respond to their response in a way that validates their emotional experience, yet I don’t always feel like I have the right words. So it’s been an interesting and heavy experience for that reason.
Do you feel that through the making of your shorts, you were able to process a lot of the emotions in order to get to a point where you can make this feature film?
I do think I couldn’t have made this film, had I not made all the short films, both artistically and emotionally. I think I was trying all sorts of things and different filmmaking approaches in my short films, which helped me build confidence as a director. That experience gave me a lot of time to become comfortable with the topic, and I can talk about it much more easily now. That was the point from the beginning, not wanting to repress these feelings and experiences. I spent so long making those short films that I really, by the time I got to make the feature, I felt like I could really focus just on the craft.
There are some edits in this film that are so beautiful, where you feel like you’re in one moment, and then it reveals you’re actually different. Like when you think you’re watching the heron fly, but it’s actually Jeremy watching the heron fly on the TV. You do that a couple of times, where the edit unmoors the viewer.
I think I’m always interested in moments in films that upend your expectation of what you’re watching. Whose perspective is it? Where is the point of view coming from? I think that’s why I was excited about the structure: I could have just told the whole story from the past and watched this family come undone. But it was the perspective being switched from child to adulthood, which I experienced, and we all experience, that I found to be interesting. Because I could actually play with the expectations of the coming-of-age genre.
I think coming of age is not something that happens when you’re a child or a teenager; it happens when you’re an adult. Where you start to have self-awareness about your past and how it made you into the person you are. That’s my understanding of coming of age. I don’t think I really came of age until my twenties, when I started looking back on my past and understood why I became the person I am. The movie is, for me, as much about Jeremy and grief as it is about what makes a person who they are. I think I started to understand the obvious reasons why I became a filmmaker when I had that self-awareness.
There’s a scene where Jeremy’s making it snow with flour for his siblings while the Dad is taking photographs. When he is developing the film, he says, “Time is going backwards. It’s a time warp.” I love the way you incorporate film and photography, not only to capture time but also because an image can be an emotional time warp; you are then playing with all the different philosophical aspects of image-making. I’d love to hear how that’s part of you as an artist, and how it’s reflected in the film.
I love that you pointed out that scene, because I think it’s such an important moment. I think image-making is something I’m naturally drawn to because of my Dad and the way I grew up around someone who was always documenting everything around him, including me as a subject. So I think the photographic image became a part of my acknowledgement of reality, of that time existing. I think of documentation as a way of bearing witness to reality. Sometimes I really question my own reality and memories. I think photographs, the photographic image, feels like proof. My Dad has this huge archive of our family that proves that there was a time before everything happened that was so beautiful. Those images are so precious to me now.
When I made “Still Processing,” I was studying the photographic image, its impact, and how it depicts mortality. This has been written very eloquently by people far more academic than I, but it’s something I studied because I think it’s about the impact of seeing those images for the first time, for me, versus seeing the video images, and the video content was very different.
I think that’s why all of my films have been about characters who are obsessed with looking at the past and looking at old photographs, looking at old videos, and trying to come to terms with the past. I think “Blue Heron” is the first film where I finally feel it’s more about accepting than processing. Sasha comes to a place where she ultimately can’t do anything about the past anymore, and she’s just coming to a place of acceptance. The photographs thematically are part of that story.
When you come to accept the past, you still carry bits of it with you, right? For Sasha, there’s the blue heron keychain that Jeremy gave her, and she also has her mom’s evil eye in her car. So she’s carrying her whole family and that whole thing with her, even as she moves forward as a person.
You’re the first person to point out the evil eye. No one else has noticed that. We tried to infuse subtle inheritances. Things that she had from her past. She’s wearing a t-shirt that Jeremy wore earlier in the film when she’s making breakfast. These little things that were hand-me-downs or from her parents.
I really was trying to show, in her childhood, the things her parents were teaching her, and then, in the second half, you see them being applied. So she’s cooking with her mom as a kid, and then later, you see her making her own breakfast. Little parallels like that. Or in the first half of the film, you see the mom recording the conversation with the psychiatrist without his knowledge. Then Sasha does the same in the second half, using her iPhone while speaking with her parents. The dad literally handing her the camera is just a very literal metaphor of this being handed down to her.
So I was trying to show the ways that you are shaped by your circumstances, but also by your parents and who they are. I think a lot about nature versus nurture, especially in relation to my brother, who grew up in the same environment but had such different outcomes in our lives. I feel like I carry a lot of survivor’s guilt in that I wonder why my life turned out this way, and his turned out that way. He did have a different father, but we grew up in the same circumstances. It’s something I feel like I can’t help but grapple with.
That is why I wanted to show the siblings’ point of view. But it was important that I admitted this is not a depiction of this person. This is just a fragmented attempt to show what I experienced. Jeremy’s only line in the movie, pretty much, is just, “I think there are a lot of things you don’t remember.” I acknowledge that this is a surface-level, impressionistic view of a person. This character is so dissimilar from my brother. There’s no way I could even begin to depict my brother. So it’s just emotionally autobiographical, and unless it’s actually footage of him, it’s never going to be accurate.
I think that line is really perceptive, just from my experience. My brother is a little bit older, but I remember everything that I went through because I went through it. But he doesn’t remember very much. I feel like his mind helped him get through it by just putting it in a box. So whenever I’m still working through stuff, he’s like, “Why are you still thinking about this?” And I’m like, “I don’t know. Why aren’t you?” It’s interesting how, with siblings, going through a lot of difficult emotions at a young age helps the body and mind develop coping mechanisms.
I thought about that a lot. I would write scenes that I had a vague memory of, but then I would speak to my parents, and they would say what I had written was so misremembered. They were like, “That’s not how that happened at all. It was much more extreme.” There were just variations, and I couldn’t believe how much I didn’t remember. Once I realized that, I decided it didn’t matter. It’s about what makes sense narratively and cinematically, and how I am going to depict it to move the story forward. It didn’t matter anymore if it was true or exactly how it happened, because if you honor that too much, then you’re creatively limiting yourself. So I just threw that out the window.
There are some needle drops in this film that are literally two of my favorite songs of all time. When King Crimson’s “I Talk To The Wind” came on, I gasped in the theater. But also “Some Things Last a Long Time” by Daniel Johnson at the end was just so beautiful. Every song by him makes me cry.
I could do a whole lecture on music supervision, because it’s so hard to find songs that you can even relatively afford. And music was so important to me. The entire atmosphere of the film stemmed from the diegetic music playing in the house. When I looked back at the videos my dad had taken, there was always music playing in the background that sounded like a musical score. So I tried to implement that in the film in the same way, where the music is coming from a source, and it’s not a musical score in the movie, but it creates the atmosphere of a musical score in the household. That was a big part of the dad’s character in the film. He’s always at a distance, but he’s creating an artistic atmosphere for the kids to live within.
So all the music was based more or less on my dad’s taste, which obviously became my own. I was talking a lot to my brother about things we remember Dad playing, and just how our tastes have all melded together. Like, I went to see the movie “The Devil and Daniel Johnson” with my parents in a theater. They loved Daniel Johnson as well. So I think all the music was little hidden love letters to my parents and acknowledgements of the impact that their tastes have had on me. Both of them are very artistic people who also love movies, and it had a big impact on me. But it was hard because it was very expensive, so we had to raise extra funds just for the music.
You bring a touch of quasi-documentary filmmaking to the scene with the social workers. I think one of the main things most people don’t have to grapple with, if they don’t have issues as a teenager, is the social services system. But having gone through it, I can say it’s a horrible system. I think it’s horrible everywhere. I don’t know why, I don’t know if there’s an answer. I like that you didn’t necessarily look for an answer. You just looked for various ways it can fail, or for the fact that there are so many variables in these kinds of situations that the system can’t cover them all.
It’s so complicated, and from a systemic perspective, we just do not have an answer. I think having grown up with a heavy presence of social services coming in and out of my house with different suggestions and solutions that never really brought any kind of relief to anybody, but also witnessing really caring, loving people who were trying to do their best within their limited roles, I really wanted to show that juxtaposition. The people within those systems are often well-intentioned, but within government systems and their limitations, all these things converge and create a very broken system where it’s so easy for people to fall through the cracks. I did so much research on social services and on psychology. I spoke to various experts while writing the script, and every single person said the same thing: there was no good answer for these things.
I even spoke to a specialist whose entire psychological research was around siblings who grew up with siblings who had extreme behavioral issues. That was his exact focus. He has a child who is very similar to my brother, who is like Jeremy. This is his entire focus, and yet, as a parent, it still happened in his family. I really wanted to show a very specific example of it, which is my own, but I know that it’s not that unique, you know? I think everyone feels isolated in their experiences. Parents, especially, feel very isolated in their experiences. They feel like they fucked up. They ask, “What did we do wrong?” And the system forces you to feel that way. Then, as someone like yourself, going through the system, you feel like you’re the scapegoat for the problems. It really is a problem that I think there is nowhere to really place the blame, except for potentially the government.
It was important to me that the social workers in the film were real social workers and experts, because I wanted them to speak for themselves, which is why we cast them. It wasn’t because I wanted a documentary aspect to the film. I need them to speak from their professional experience. I did a test shoot with social workers, and I played Sasha. We did the whole conversation, which ended with them saying, “Even now, twenty years later, we don’t have a much better response to this.” It was important that it was actually baked into the reality, not just me writing a script.
Your film is wonderfully empathetic with how the parents feel. Even though they’re trying to get help and social services are trying to help them, they still feel like they’re bad parents. She says social services thinks she’s a bad mom. When I was a teenager, I didn’t think that my parents felt like they were bad parents, but I realized when I got older, I was in foster care. Of course, they felt like they were bad parents. You have to get older to realize how your parents even felt about you growing up, let alone how you felt about your parents. I think this is a film that had to have been made when you were older, so that you could have that perspective. I’m glad you waited until you had that perspective, so that it could be a fuller portrait.
If I had made this when I was twenty-five, it would have been much more angry and confused and in the middle of everything. I think I needed the time and the space to actually make the film, not just emotionally, but artistically as well. Back then, it wouldn’t be as coherent. I think a lot of people are rushing to make their first feature before they’re thirty, or whatever, but I highly recommend making shorts until you feel you actually have something to say.
How do you hope people will feel when the film is over?
I hope they feel okay. I’ve been asked, “What do you want people to take from it?” But I don’t want people to feel a certain way. If they happen to feel moved by it, I hope they feel open to it and accepting of those feelings, however they choose to process them. It’s a very personal film that I think I’ve opened up to the world, and I made it with the hope that people could connect to it, and it’s so clear to me that this film is emotionally resonating with a lot of people, but it would be strange if it did that for everybody.
Were there any films by other women filmmakers that either inspired you or that you think not enough people have seen?
A film I only discovered while prepping this film, after a friend recommended it, was Martha Coolidge’s 1976 “Not A Pretty Picture.” I bring it up specifically because you said it’s underseen. It was only restored in 2022 and had such a small release. Watching it now, it’s crazy to me how much of an impact it clearly had, even somehow subconsciously, on so many filmmakers. It’s doing the hybrid techniques so elegantly, and it’s from fifty years ago. There are some films made before it that are hybrid, of course. But I think the way she’s balancing the fiction, the emotional catharsis, and the personal filmmaking is incredible.
I’m in a long line of women, specifically, who make work based on processing their pasts, especially within systemic harm and societal issues, using themselves as a vessel to discover those things. When I saw that film, it just made me feel like I was in conversation with a film that I had not even seen. It made me feel like there is something very specific and special about the way that women use film. There’s a whole history behind that, and it’s an honor to be in a historical conversation with these other films that, for some reason, women are drawn to making.
Coolidge’s film also helped me feel more confident in my own film’s structure. Because I think the way that she’s using cross-cutting makes a lot of sense for that movie, but it made me realize that what I was trying to do was actually different. I really wanted to show time being ripped away from someone. I think when you cross-cut, you actually cradle time, and you don’t have that same effect of time disappearing. That’s why I wanted to avoid cross-cutting between the two timelines. I wanted it to be a jarring bifurcation in the middle where you’re suddenly in adulthood. Sometimes it’s affirming to watch something you love, doing something in a way that affirms a decision to do the same thing differently.
- “Get Out” Star Betty Gabriel and “Nuremberg” Director James Vanderbilt to Attend Ebertfest 2026 (April 17, 2026)
Chaz Ebert and Festival Director Nate Kohn are thrilled to announce the addition of two more Special Guests at Ebertfest 2026: The Last Dance, it’s 27th and final edition, in Champaign, Illinois, today, April 17th, and tomorrow, April 18th. At today’s screening of Jordan Peele‘s Oscar-winning “Get Out” we are fortunate to have actress Betty Gabriel, in attendance for the post-screening Q&A. Gabriel’s spellbinding performance stands as one of the film’s many highlights, and is among the numerous impressive achievements in her career, which includes roles on TV shows such as “Westworld,” “Good Girls Revolt” and “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan” as well as films including “Upgrade,” “It Lives Inside” and “Novocaine.”
We are also pleased to be welcoming talented writer/director James Vanderbilt, with his epic “Nuremberg.” He will be participating in a post-screening Q&A with Sony Pictures Classics Co-Founder and Co-President Michael Barker (whose films have graced the Ebertfest screens for many years.) Mr. Vanderbilt’s directorial debut, 2015’s “Truth,” starred Robert Redford as “60 Minutes” anchor Dan Rather, while his script for David Fincher’s 2007 film “Zodiac” received rave reviews. Other notable credits in his remarkable career include penning the screenplays for “The Amazing Spider-Man,” “White House Down” and 2022’s successful “Scream” reboot.
Presented by Century Law Firm, this milestone year marks a poignant farewell to one of the most beloved film festivals in the country, celebrating a legacy rooted in empathy, storytelling, and the communal power of cinema. Ebertfest will kick off at 9am on April 17th with Libby Ewing’s Tribeca prize-winner, “Charliebird,” with its star and writer, Samantha Smart, in attendance. The film will be presented in partnership with the Alliance for Inclusion and Respect, and follows a music therapist who forms an unexpected bond with a young patient, unlocking the buried grief of her past in a journey of connection, loss, and healing.
The festival’s second scheduled screening at 11:25am will be James Vanderbilt’s acclaimed ensemble piece, “Nuremberg,” starring Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, Leo Woodall, John Slattery, and Mark O’Brien, with Richard E. Grant and Michael Shannon. Set as the Nuremberg trials are about to begin, the film follows a U.S. Army psychiatrist who becomes locked in a gripping psychological confrontation with accused Nazi war criminal Hermann Göring, delivering a tense and timely examination of justice, power, and moral reckoning.
Following a break for lunch will be Luke Boyce and Michael Moreci’s new documentary on Roger Ebert, “The Last Movie Critic,” at 3:30pm. Through the voices of filmmakers Ebert championed and the words he left behind, it explores how one man’s deep and abiding love for cinema became a gift to audiences everywhere, serving as a celebration of movies, empathy, and the belief that what we watch together can make us more human. Jennifer Shelby served as an Executive Producer on projects, while Chaz Ebert, Nate Kohn, and Brett Hays are among the producers. The picture is a production of Shatterglass Films, for which Boyce and Hays have documented Ebertfest and interviewed its guests for over a decade.
One of 2025’s beloved crowd-pleasers, “Bob Trevino Likes It,” will screen at 5:10pm with its writer/director Tracie Laymon and star French Stewart in attendance. Inspired by a true story, the film follows Lily Trevino (Barbie Ferreira), a young woman navigating abandonment and emotional isolation, who forms an unexpected and transformative friendship with a stranger (John Leguizamo) online.
After a dinner break, Friday will conclude with an 8:50pm screening of Jordan Peele’s galvanizing modern classic, “Get Out.” Winner of the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, the 2017 film follows Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) as he accompanies his girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) for a weekend visit to meet her parents (Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener), only to uncover a series of increasingly disturbing revelations that lead to a shocking and horrifying truth. The film also features memorable turns by Lil Rel Howery, Caleb Landry Jones and the evening’s special guest, Betty Gabriel, who will participate in a Q&A with Fulbright Scholar Dr. Douglas Arnell Williams afterward.
Moviegoers who catch the first show on April 18th are in for a serious treat: a 9am screening of Buster Keaton’s 100-year-old uproarious masterpiece, “The General,” with its score performed live by The Anvil Orchestra. One of the most revered comedies of the silent era, the film follows Southern railroad engineer Johnny Gray, who must pursue Union soldiers after his train—and his beloved Annabelle Lee—are taken during the Civil War, leading to a series of inventive and daring comedic set pieces. Renowned organist Dr. Steven Ball will also be bringing his own live signature musical interludes between each screening this year.
One of Roger’s favorite filmmakers, Gregory Nava, will return to Ebertfest for a 10:25pm screening of his marvelous 1995 film, “My Family (Mi Familia).” Starring Jimmy Smits, Esai Morales, Jennifer Lopez, Edward James Olmos, and Constance Marie, the film tells the story of a second-generation Mexican immigrant who narrates his family history, beginning with the journey of his father, Jose, across Mexico to Los Angeles where he meets Maria and starts a family. Each subsequent generation contends with political and social hardships, ranging from illegal deportations in the 1940s to racial tensions and gang conflicts in the 1960s and 1970s. Yet through it all, the family remains strong, bound together by resilience, love, and shared history.
Following a lunch break that will offer festival goers the opportunity to sample Mexican dishes courtesy of Mo’s Burritos, a live theatrical production will take place at 2:30pm on the Virginia’s stage. Under the direction of Katlin Schneider, Windy City actors Stephen Winchell and Zack Mast will channel the titular roles in Siskel/Ebert, a hilarious recreation of the critics’ infamous 1987 episode of their groundbreaking show, in which they debated the merits of such titles as “Full Metal Jacket,” “Benji the Hunted” and “Spaceballs.”
Acting icons John Goodman and Judy Greer will then take the stage at 3:40pm, along with co-directors Edd Benda and Stephen Helstad, as they present their dark comedy, “Chili Finger,” which earned raves following its recent premiere at SXSW. Shot in and around Ebert’s hometown, the film centers on Greer’s character as she discovers a severed finger in her chili, which prompts her to blackmail a fast-food chain, only to attract dangerous attention. Rounding out the impressive cast are Sean Astin, Bryan Cranston, and Madeline Wise.
The subsequent dinner break (which is guaranteed to include no severed limbs) will lead to the final film of Ebertfest, a 7:25pm screening of 1995’s euphoric “The American President,” directed by the late Rob Reiner. Starring Michael Douglas and Annette Bening, and written by Aaron Sorkin, the film remains a defining work of modern American cinema, blending idealism, romance, and political discourse with uncommon warmth and intelligence. The screening will serve as a centerpiece of this year’s festival, celebrating Reiner’s enduring influence and his alignment with the thoughtful, audience-centered filmmaking championed by the festival’s late co-founder, Roger Ebert.
“We are especially honored to recognize Rob Reiner this year,” said Chaz Ebert. “I had the pleasure of inviting Rob to Ebertfest last year, and while he wasn’t able to attend at the time, he shared how much he was looking forward to joining us in the future. To now celebrate his extraordinary body of work and his deep commitment to storytelling feels incredibly meaningful. We are also proud to honor Robert Redford for his immeasurable contributions to independent filmmaking; his vision helped create a path for generations of filmmakers to tell bold, personal stories.”
Ebertfest 2026: The Last Dance is dedicated to the memory of both Reiner and Redford, two towering figures in the film industry whom both Roger and Chaz greatly admired. Of Redford, Roger wrote, “His Sundance Institute is a workshop where veterans work with young directors, writers and actors, improving films that often get made and praised. No single person has done more for the independent film movement.” Chaz served on the Sundance Jury and also started a program taking Ebert Fellows to the Sundance Film Festival. This evolved into Sundance’s program giving more chances to Film Critics of color to fully participate in the festival.
Roger’s four-star review of Reiner’s “The American President,” began by noting, “It is hard to make a good love story, harder to make a good comedy and harder still to make an intelligent film about politics. Rob Reiner’s ‘The American President’ cheerfully does all three, and is a great entertainment – one of those films, like ‘Forrest Gump’ or ‘Apollo 13,’ that however briefly unites the audience in a reprise of the American dream.”
The majority of individual seating tickets for Ebertfest 2026 are $20, plus an additional processing fee of $3. Select titles are $10 plus an additional processing fee of $2. A Reserved 1-Day Festival Pass is available for $75.00 plus a $6.00 processing fee. An Individual Reserved Seating Festival Pass, which includes admission to all films, is $150 plus a $9.00 processing fee per pass. Get tickets here.
Ebertfest was founded in 1999 by Roger and Chaz Ebert, with Professor Nate Kohn as Festival Director. Roger Ebert was a Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, University of Illinois journalism alumnus, and Urbana native. Chaz Ebert is also the author of the indie bestseller It’s Time to Give A FECK: Elevating Humanity through Forgiveness, Empathy, Compassion, and Kindness. Ebertfest is hosted by Chaz Ebert and Nate Kohn.
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- The Best Version of the Thing: Steven Soderbergh on “The Christophers” (April 17, 2026)
A lo-fi heist film bolstered by dynamic and intimate camera work, director Steven Soderbergh’s “The Christophers” delights in simply seeing two people go to war. Sir Ian McKellen plays Julian Sklar, a master painter contemplating his legacy after failing to complete a series of famed portraits (the titular Christophers). His opportunistic children, Barnaby (James Corden) and Sallie (Jessica Gunning), hire master forger and closeted artist, Lori Butler (Michaela Coel), to act as Julian’s housekeeper and complete the Christophers so that they can be “discovered” upon Julian’s passing. Lori is employed by Julian easily enough, but what neither of them expects is that their cat-and-mouse game becomes the launchpad for deeper conversations about the process of making art and who gets to own our work after we pass. It often feels as though Soderbergh and screenwriter Ed Solomon are using the bickering and moments of sincerity between these characters as mouthpieces for their own musings.
For Soderbergh, one conviction he’s sure of is that, as much as people may want to imitate the style of some of his greatest hits, he hopes that a big part of his legacy can be the way in which he made his films. “Honestly, if you were to say, ‘You get to pick between your influence being the way that you work or the work itself,’ I wouldn’t hesitate to go, ‘Please be influenced by the way that I work.’ I would be happier if they took the methodology as opposed to the result,” he shared.
Soderbergh spoke with RogerEbert.com about how some of the most striking sequences in the film were born of trying to solve problems, how he resists easy itemization and characterization, and how he sees a core part of his artistry as stress-testing the new technologies at his disposal.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Whether it is the “Oceans” films or “Logan Lucky,” you revel in depicting characters in the throes of process and problem-solving. Was there a “problem” you were trying to solve while making “The Christophers?”
The challenge was to keep it visually interesting without being distracting and coming from a place of insecurity. I kept reminding myself, “We have good text, we have great actors, you don’t have to tart this thing up.” I would say the most noticeable gimmick that I employed, which I hope is something the audience feels more than they know explicitly, is that as soon as you cross the threshold into Julian’s house, everything is through a handheld camera lens.
Whenever we’re outside the house, we’re in “studio mode” or in sequences where Julian is not present. That was the largest directorial concept it needed. It’s not a very overt thing, but psychologically for the viewer, it creates the same sense of instability that Lori steps into Julian’s house. Ultimately, the challenge was simply to stay on point with that approach and avoid any trickery.
Speaking of trickery, it was only in reading other interviews that I learned that the interiors and exteriors for the house were different locations.
That was the goal. The other aspect was that, while I was making the film and reviewing cut material, I’d make minor recalibrations a couple of times a week. That “interview” scene with Lori was shot twice. We shot it the first time on a Friday, and over the weekend I talked to Ed and said, “Let’s do that again.” When we first shot it, the day had been structured in such a way that we’d shot all these other sequences except for that one. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when we started shooting that, and it was a bit too late in the day to start a scene of that length and significance. I wanted it to be fresher.
Ed shared at Lincoln Center that the scene cutaway to Lori putting her face in her hands amid Julian’s monologue came from going through the scene again.
Yeah, I wanted to go back and make more explicit both of her wondering what she’s gotten herself into. It’s also the dropping of the mask for a moment for the audience’s benefit. That way, we see that she is really putting on a performance, just like Julian. Julian has a performative personality, which is why it’s so fun to see Ian playing that part, but that addition is an example of the kind of real-time calibration where, with my collaborators, we’re extracting everything in the scene to emphasize.
You’ve offered the work of John Schlesinger, particularly “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and Peter Yates’ 1983 film “The Dresser” as some launch pad for influences. I’m curious how those manifested in “The Christophers.”
Those are both extremely well-directed movies, but not in a flashy way or in a way that a regular audience would notice. Anyone who makes films would be struck by the sense of craft and by the way the performances are front and center. They’re also examples of egoless direction; you can tell Yates and Schlesinger’s attitude is like “This isn’t about me. I want you to think about the characters.” So those films serve as good touchstones to remind me to stay on course.
There’s been a lot of discussion about how the audience has to be engaged, and therefore, that things need to be happening all the time. Scene to scene in “The Christophers,” there is a lot happening. You keep getting new information that makes you reassess what you’ve watched up to that point. On a narrative, emotional, and philosophical level, it’s a very active film; it just happens to be contained. I saw my role as a director to highlight the activity already there, the way Schlesinger and Yates did in those two films.
That’s interesting because I’ve heard Ian talk about how, in the way you carried the camera, you were very much like another character that he was acutely aware of. He described how, as he moved, he’d witness you react in real time, as if you were discovering the shot in that moment. Do you see yourself that way, as a third “presence” amidst this two-hander?
Well, I love that he felt that close and that the intimacy that I was trying to create with them. I have this little thing I call the butt dolly—which was built for “The Knick”—and it’s basically a cushioned stool with six roller wheels that allow me, moment to moment, to adjust to anything the actors are doing. I think you could ask both of them, but I never ask them to hit a mark. I never said “Don’t go there” because I don’t want to break the spell of what they’re doing. I’m always trying to eliminate anything that might invade their little bubble of performance. Ultimately, I don’t want them to think about me or anybody else on set.
It’s not lost on me that Michaela is the sole person of color dealing with the spoiled and selfish white elites. Were there ever any discussions between you and Ed about the racial dynamics taking on a more central part of this story?
It was kind of built into the setup. On one layer, you have older artists going against younger artists. I think seeing this older white guy and this person of color, I felt the audience would already be aware of the other dynamics at play. You see how Julian lives, you see how she lives … you get it. Ultimately, the issues they’re grappling with are more philosophical and would exist regardless of race or even age. It’s about power and how that intertwines with being an artist. At one point, Ed and I did talk about whether there should be something more explicit about that contrast between the two characters, and Michaela was one of the people who just felt like, “I don’t think you need to say that.”
Looking at your career as a whole, you’ve shared how you never want to make the same movie twice. Yet recently, you’ve reflected on this notion that “I’ve never done anything first.” How are you reconciling those ideas?
I’ve come to the point where I’m trying to articulate some of these ideas only because I think it’s important for a creative person to know who they are and what they are. Early in my career in the mid ’90s, I was trying to figure out what kind of filmmaker I was, and I came to several realizations, one of which was that, while I have written, I am not a writer by my definition. I am also a synthesist, not an originator. There’s a real freedom in that because it allows me to shapeshift, as opposed to having a style that I apply to each film and therefore seek out material that fits with that style. I can just go to the material I’m interested in and then determine what kind of filmmaker I want to be to present it in its best form. So, for me, it allows for endless reinvention, which keeps things lively.
Assessing how you’re doing objectively is important and difficult. I think it’s important to know how you’re doing and to have some sense of how successful your work is, creatively, on its own terms. I don’t think it’s a bad or a dangerous thing for me to look back on things that I’ve done and say, “I think certain things are better than other things” and to see if I can extract from the things that I think either don’t work at all or don’t work as well as they should and carry those right lessons into my future work. I’m not sure if it’s possible to be objective at all about your own work, but I do believe that there’s a way of working and a process that you can engage with or establish that gives you the best possible chance of an objectively good creative outcome. That’s what I’m stress testing all the time: the process that I can control.
There’s a way in which you can run your set that you have control over, apart from how the film will do well financially or critically. You’re making me think about how, when we think about distilling a director’s ticks, we usually talk about stylistic flourishes but never the philosophy with which they might be making movies. Honestly, if you were to say, “You get to pick between your influence being the way that you work or the work itself,” I wouldn’t hesitate to go, “Please be influenced by the way that I work.” I would be happier if they took the methodology as opposed to the result. You don’t learn as much from the things that just seem to work. You know what I mean? You learn more from the things that end up not quite working. The successes are kind of like these whirlwind one-night stands where you didn’t even catch the person’s name. Failure is like the guest that won’t leave.
One line that resonates with me was when Julian was lamenting that upon his death, his life would be immediately “itemized,” that he would become “Julian Sklar … the spreadsheet.” It’s made me reflect on how people try to itemize us to make sense of our presence and passing. I know you’ve tried to resist easy characterization, but has working on this film made you reflect or make some peace with the ways people might try to make “Steven Soderbergh the spreadsheet.”
Luckily, and I think it was because of the way I was raised, I don’t imbue objects with the kind of emotions and meanings that I think some people do. As a result, the good part is that it also kind of leads to me not being bothered by setbacks, criticism, or anything like that. It doesn’t throw me off because I’m more focused. I’m able to control. I’m very good at letting go of what I can’t control. At the same time, I do think everybody who makes things hopes that they will be seen, first of all, and then thought of as living on in the minds of others.
What you’re saying is making me think about the recent news that even under the new leadership regime at Lucasfilm, “The Hunt for Ben Solo” won’t be moving forward. Despite putting in years of your life into making it, you seem to have mastered the art of making peace with setbacks like that. I imagine it’s difficult not to hold your art so preciously.
I have zero regrets about my time working on that project because that was time in the creative gym. I’ve just sort of reframed it for myself, in thinking the goal here was to get a great script, and we did that. So the rest of it, once you’ve reached that point, those other parts were things I couldn’t control. I can only shape things up until a certain point. I’m not going to burn calories on anything other than what’s coming.
I know you wanted to capture their performances more naturally, but I love the organic embellishments they would bring to a given moment. Ian’s little “Wee!” and his dances come to mind. Were those directed, or was that the result of his freestyle?
There are lots of things that come to mind when I think about that scene. We showed everything leading up to Julian walking over, picking up the canvas, and getting paint on his hands. We cut, then, when we started up again, we saw him put everything on the easel, all the way to the end, of him excoriating Lori and her leaving. That was going to be a take; we had two cameras running, and we did four or five versions of it with me changing the angles each time to give myself coverage and options. I did a first assembly of it using a lot of those different angles, and as Ed and I looked at it, we agreed that the first take was just the best take. With all the other angles, I had to be careful not to show the canvas. The film was best served by the very first take, and that was a moment where, rather than try to control some of Ian’s movements to get the desired effect, I just went with what felt right.
I also think about the ways you shot the Art Fight sequences; were there different approaches you considered for portraying that scene before landing on showcasing the actors from the back?
That was a solution to a problem: those scenes were all supposed to be fifteen years earlier. We had two choices: we could do a VFX de-aging thing, which is not cheap, or we could just try to wing it without that and see if there’s a way, through performance and costuming, to kind of make people believe it’s fifteen years ago. That felt kind of sub-optimal. As I was watching the scene being rehearsed and imagining these versions, I thought, well, I know one way to solve this: shoot the scene from the back of their heads.
So that was a practical decision, but it also makes you think about what’s being said differently than if we shot that scene straight on. As a viewer, you provide the emotion that you imagine is being displayed. It’s a more active image.
I’m curious if you can share more about the lessons about adaptation you’ve learned through the years. You’ve previously described yourself as trying to be a “cockroach” in the industry, and I’m wondering how you discern the line between adaptability and rootedness.
Everything flows from the best possible result for the viewer, period. I worked back from that. I think what I owe the audience is the best version of the thing. So I want to know about all available tools to get the best results. It’s a complex issue we’re all facing, not just in the creative space but in the broader sociopolitical landscape of what technology is doing to us. It’s something I think about a lot. I think sometimes people’s legitimate anxiety and displeasure about technology in the non-creative space bleed into and infect the conversation at large. For me, disengagement is not an option.
I want to know, as fast as we can, what place all this technology is going to have for us. We’re right at the beginning in a lot of ways. I have no clue what level of integration we’ll be looking at. The only way to find out is to sort of experiment. It’s an open question as to what the ultimate value or use of certain technologies will be. And the more people that engage with it, the faster we’ll figure that out. When the general perception is that somebody has, quote unquote, gone too far, I’m like, “Well, that’s good news.” Sometimes you need to know where the line is.
“The Christophers” is in select theaters via NEON.
- ‘The Last Dance’ Ends a Beautiful, Impactful Run for the Long-time Roger Ebert Film Festival (April 16, 2026)
Born and raised in Urbana-Champaign, Roger Ebert left his mark everywhere—as a sportswriter for The News-Gazette when he was 15, at Urbana High School as Senior Class President and co-editor of The Echo student newspaper, and, at the time of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, on to the University of Illinois and The Daily Illini, where Ebert later became the Editor-in-Chief. He then went to work at the Chicago Sun-Times, became the paper’s film critic and was honored with a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism—the first for film—in 1975, achieving national and international recognition.
Yet when he, along with wife Chaz Ebert and Nate Kohn, brought The Roger Ebert Overlooked Film Festival (now affectionately known as Ebertfest) to the Virginia Theatre in Champaign in 1999, little did anyone know at the time what a truly indelible impact there would be on the film world, but particularly on his hometown in the middle of the corn and bean fields of east-central Illinois. Acclaimed actors, writers, directors, producers, film critics and movie lovers would continue to gather in Champaign-Urbana for a handful of days every year, except in 2020 when it was cancelled because of coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), for 26 years—long after even Ebert himself lasted on this earth, sadly. They would interact with local, everyday people, and spark conversations of mutual interest in art, storytelling, the human condition and life itself.
This festival that they built transformed our community for the better.
And now, the last of the festivals—“The Last Dance”—is being held April 17-18 at the time-honored Virginia Theatre and will provide a fitting end to a beautiful run.
The memories, and the lessons, will remain—just as the statue of Ebert will remain, offering his signature thumbs-up from a movie theater seat in front of the Virginia—to remind us of the life-altering power and cultivated empathy of film by immersing viewers in both familiar and unfamiliar perspectives.
As Ebert once said, “Of all the arts, movies are the most powerful aid to empathy, and good ones make us into better people.”
Would that we all continue to see many good movies.
I saw a lot of them through the years at Ebertfest—not just the overlooked—and many with Ebert’s own skilled, critical perspective in mind as the movies were screened. I’ve also appreciated the panels and audience questions, learning from each festival as they would transform into a classroom. After experiencing the movies and the panels and the audience Q-and-As as one united community, there are the breaks—the entr’actes—between screenings to meet friends, old and new, from the area and from around the country and the world. They provided an opportunity to take part in an improvisational public square, enjoying the company of different people and learning about different lives and perspectives.
Like many who have volunteered, worked or attended every Ebertfest since the beginning, I am rather nostalgic and hate to see the end of Ebertfest. It’s hard to believe that it was 27 years ago when I saw “Shiloh,” starring Scott Wilson, whom I later hosted along with his wife, Heavenly, when they came back with another film. And it was bittersweet when I saw Heavenly again a few years later, this time along with Polish actress Maja Komorowska (and her grandson, Jerzy Tyszkiewicz, as her translator) who came to Ebertfest for the Scott Wilson film she was in, “A Year of the Quiet Sun,” after he had passed away.
But I guess over the course of 27 years, we are all bound to experience pain and loss, as well as the joy. That is part of life. And this year, I will remember it all with gratitude—not only the people, like Roger Ebert, Scott Wilson, Kris Kristofferson, Kaylie Jones, Paul Cox, Dusty Kohl, Norman Lear, and many others, but also the fun, the stories and, of course, the movies.
This year’s final lineup of films and guests will no doubt be special. Chaz Ebert and Nate Kohn have continued Roger’s legacy with love and honor.
May this “Last Dance” finale for Ebertfest, that Roger Ebert graciously brought to our community, be a celebratory, full-house, lovefest thank-you from all of us.
- Netflix’s “Beef” Returns with a Season as Twisted and Hysterical as the First (April 16, 2026)
2023’s “Beef” was so good that a limited series turned into an anthology with creator Lee Sung Jin hoping to avoid the sophomore slump with another twisted, unpredictable tale of anger and class with entirely new characters. The multiple Emmy-winning original told the tale of a pair of fractured people whose chance encounter sent ripples across both their lives. The second season of “Beef” expands its net to entangle two couples at very different stages of love and life, again thrust together by an angry outburst. Once again, the writing is as good as anything on television as Lee’s gift for dialogue and storytelling shines through all eight episodes, a series that so thoroughly avoids the common drag of Netflix bloat that its pace should be studied by anyone who gets a contract with the streaming giant. One of this era’s best ensembles digs into the witty repartee and complex characters provided by Lee’s writers room, leaving you wondering who is to blame and who to root for. The answers are everybody. And nobody.
Oscar Isaac plays Josh Martin, a general manager of a country club who is wealthy by anyone’s standards, but he’s found himself in a world of the uber-rich, people who bet thousands on single hands of poker with Michael Phelps. Josh doesn’t have anywhere near that kind of money, which makes it harder to swim with those sharks, and the stress caused by a bed-and-breakfast project he’s been working on with his wife Lindsay (Carey Mulligan) has been actively eating away at their relationship. Surrounded by signs of the life he never had as a musician in his man cave, Josh fights an OnlyFans addiction while Lindsay is even more active in her infidelity, texting old flames before blocking them out of regret and flirting with the handsome tennis pro at the club. She very clearly resents and probably has grown to hate Josh.
Beef. (L to R) Charles Melton as Austin Davis, Carey Mulligan as Lindsay Crane-Martin, Oscar Isaac as Josh Martin, Cailee Spaeny as Ashley Miller in episode 202 of Beef. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
And she doesn’t hesitate to tell him all of this in the premiere’s inciting incident, a no-holds-barred fight in which Josh and Lindsay seem to be heading to divorce if they don’t kill each other first. As the two reach an angry climax in which it looks one might actually hurt the other, they look outside to see one of Josh’s employees, a drink cart girl from the club named Ashley (Cailee Spaeny). She’s been watching with her puppy dog of a fiancée Austin (Charles Melton). And they weren’t just watching. They were recording.
Ashley and Austin, an aspiring personal trainer, seem like decent, ordinary people. They regret invading the privacy of the Martins—they were there to return the wallet that Josh left at the club—but everything changes when they realize they have been presented with an opportunity. What will Josh and Lindsay do to keep that violent secret buried? Even in the middle of an active blackmail, Ashley and Austin try to hold onto their humanity. She just wants a better job at the club; he eventually wants some opportunities as a trainer. And then “Beef” takes the first of many fascinating twists as Josh and Lindsay seem less infuriated by their blackmailers and more inspired. After all, they’re owed a few things by a broken system, too.
Beef. (L to R) Charles Melton as Austin Davis, Seoyeon Jang as Eunice in episode 203 of Beef. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
“We’re not bad people, they are.” This line is at the core of the thematic foundation of “Beef.” No one ever thinks the morally questionable behavior in which they are partaking makes them bad. They find ways out of that kind of logic, usually by pointing at someone who’s even worse. And this season has a lot of fun playing with the varied morality on the rungs of the economic ladder. Josh/Lindsay may be rich compared to Austin/Ashley, but they’re nothing when contrasted against the new owner of Josh’s country club, Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung, who won an Oscar for “Minari”), or her famous plastic surgeon husband Dr. Kim (Song Kang-ho of “Parasite”). At its core, “Beef” is about three couples who make increasingly bad decisions that are influenced by their place on the most important spectrum in this world: the wealth one.
Just the second episode alone is a masterpiece of desperation: a character study of people who think they have discovered loopholes in a broken system who will eventually learn that they are actually nooses. It’s here where Lee’s writers and ensemble really dig into these characters to reveal the nuance of their performances. Melton avoids “dumb guy” stereotypes by understanding that Austin genuinely wants to be decent, even as he starts to feel tempted by Chairwoman Park’s gorgeous assistant Eunice (Seoyeon Jang). Isaac avoids the sweaty desperation that could have turned Josh into a caricature, always playing the realism of the predicament in front of him. He understands a character who has talked his way out of many business problems and, in the process, talked his way into a life he hates. Mulligan, Youn, and Song are all predictably great.
However, if the season has an MVP it’s Cailee Spaeny, who gets to use some acting tools she had yet to employ. In films like “Priscilla” and “Alien Romulus,” she’s often very heavy as a performer, leaning into serious notes that fit those roles, but she’s buoyant and very funny here, getting us to immediately like Ashley, and then testing that likability with some truly horrible decisions. It is easily one of the best performances of the year, the peak of its best ensemble.
Beef. (L to R) Carey Mulligan as Lindsay Crane-Martin, Oscar Isaac as Josh Martin in episode 208 of Beef. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
The endgame of the second season of “Beef” relies on an incredible amount of coincidences like a quickly repeated conversation from a party and an overheard one on a plane, but the writing has done so much strong work by this point that these devices can be forgiven. It’s really a show that works on so many levels, from individual jokes that reflect a sense of humor that understands the pop culture world of 2026 to the bigger issues of wealth inequity, gender disparity, and even the generation gap.
There’s a refined simplicity to the first season of “Beef” in its inciting incident of a middle finger in a parking lot that is a bit missed in a second outing that’s less immediately relatable, but that feeling fades away as one grasps the ambition of the entire piece. If people saw themselves in the protagonists of the first “Beef,” you can see the world in this one, a study of how wealth divides our society, but can also unite people like Austin, Ashley, Josh, and Lindsay through their shared truth: They’re all broken.
Whole season screened for review. Now on Netflix.
