The Pink House is an unfinished feature film by director Joële Walinga, which was the subject of Walinga’s copyright infringement allegations against Sophy Romvari regarding her film Blue Heron.  

Walinga’s film The Pink House consists of three key components towards the exploration of autobiographical childhood trauma and memories. The first component is the fictional recreation of Walinga’s childhood memories, played out as narrative scenes, made to include their incongruities and inaccuracies. The second component forms a juxtaposition against the fictional narrative scenes with scenes of the filmmaker herself – Walinga, whose imperfect memories we have just been watching – investigating these very memories. The third component is the folding of both previous components in on themselves, where the filmmaker Walinga enters the fictionalized world of her childhood memories, and there enacts a reconciliation with the childhood trauma and provides comfort to her childhood self. This reconciliation serves as the emotional and structural climax, is key to the overall power and effect of the film, and can only exist conceptually with the presence of the first two components. 

In February 2019, shortly after Walinga and Romvari first became friends, Walinga told Romvari about her planned second feature The Pink House, for which she was writing a grant application for financing through the Canada Council for the Arts. 

In March 2019, Romvari asked to read Walinga’s grant application treatment of The Pink House, and after reading it, told Walinga that it made her cry.

Walinga’s film The Pink House received funding in July 2019 from the Canada Council for the Arts, and that same month, her mother died. 

In October 2019, Walinga travelled to her hometown and began research and production on the documentary portion of The Pink House, but found it distressing and painful to make such a personal film while still grieving, and temporarily put the project on hold, planning instead to make it later in her career.  

In October 2025, Walinga watched the completed version of Romvari’s first feature film, titled Blue Heron, and felt that the core concept of The Pink House had been taken and applied to Romvari’s childhood experiences instead of Walinga’s. Unlike earlier concepts Romvari shared with Walinga about her first feature, Blue Heron now began with memories enacted in fiction narrative scenes, followed by a filmmaker character investigating those very memories, and culminating in the filmmaker character entering the world of those memories for an act of reconciliation and providing comfort to her child self. 

Walinga initiated a legal dispute alleging copyright infringement against Sophy Romvari in November 2025.  

Both Walinga’s and Romvari’s counsel negotiated and the parties have come to a mutually agreed resolution. The financial element of this resolution, after Walinga’s legal fees, is what constitutes this grant. 

As a term of settlement, we are obligated to mention that Romvari and her production company Nine Behind Productions deny Walinga’s allegations, and the resolution does not constitute any admission of liability or wrongdoing.