A shy, yet ambitious film student (Honor Swinton Byrne) is just starting to find her voice as an artist when, during the 1980s she enters into a turbulent relationship with a charismatic, erudite heroin addict and dandy (Tom Burke), a guru-like father figure. She distances herself from her overprotective mother (Tilda Swinton) and concerned friends and goes even deeper into an intense, emotionally charged affair that comes dangerously close to self-destruction.

The much-lauded writer-director Joanna Hogg turned the kaleidoscopic The Souvenir into a mysterious, personal portrait of ‘the artist as a young woman’. The lavish, dreamy story about a young adult and first love is replete with refined aesthetics. Director Joanna Hogg prefers static shots, long takes and leads with claustrophobic interior lives.

This is the first time the British filmmaker has focused on her own history, which she does using her portrait of the 25-year-old Julie. Just like Hogg, this posh kid takes a film course and moves into a flat in London during the 1980s, a replica of the one Hogg inhabited at the time. Hogg’s childhood friend and aspiring actress Tilda Swinton played in Hogg’s graduation film Caprice from 1986. In The Souvenir she plays Julie’s mother. Hogg and Swinton both went to the same boarding school and always remained friends.

Best film 2019

‘A social-realist film about posh people’ is how The Guardian described The Souvenir. And: ‘A contemporary answer to Antonioni and Visconti’. The leading British film magazine Sight and Sound crowned the film best film of the year for 2019 which was the first time in a decade that the prize was won by a British production.

Pre-film

Tilda Swinton hand-picked a short film, either from her rich oeuvre or from Eye’s collection, to precede all feature films. Before The Souvenir you will see the short British film Flat 19 (2025, 5’) by Joanna Hogg. The film was made during the development of the installation Hogg created for the exhibition Tilda Swinton - Ongoing. Tilda Swinton interacts with a scale model of the London flat she lived in at a formative point in her life. As a vessel for her memories, the model becomes a key to remembering that time.

Paradise Lost 3 : Purgatory

Joe Berlinger / US, 2011

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