'The Souvenir Part II' Trailer: Joanna Hogg's Memory Tribute Is A Meta-Filmmaking Impression

Joanna Hogg’s 2019 film “The Souvenir” made a big splash at its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival that year. The film went on to win the World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at the festival that year and was a critic’s favorite, ending up on several Top 10 lists at year’s end. Now, Hogg’s follow-up “The Souvenir Part II” gets its New York premiere with a screening at the New York Film Festival this week, after its world premiere earlier this year in Cannes.

Hogg’s film follows the semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story of Honor Swinton Byrne’s Julie as she processes her problematic relationship with Tom Burke’s Anthony as she attends film school.

Here’s the official synopsis:

In the aftermath of her tumultuous relationship with a charismatic and manipulative older man, Julie begins to untangle her fraught love for him in making her graduation film, sorting fact from his elaborately constructed fiction. Joanna Hogg’s shimmering story of first love and a young woman’s formative years, The Souvenir Part II is a portrait of the artist that transcends the halting particulars of everyday life — a singular, alchemic mix of memoir and fantasy.

“The Souvenir Part II” reunites Byrne with her mother, Tilda Swinton, Richard Ayoade, and Ariane Labed from the 2019 film. New additions to the cast include Harris Dickinson (‘Beach Rats’), Joe Alwyn (‘The Favourite’), and Charlie Heaton (Jonathan Bryers from Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’).

Hogg’s film is the first of hers to premiere at Cannes. A joint production through Ireland’s Element Pictures, UK’s JWH Films For BBC, BFI, and Martin Scorsese’s Sikelia Productions, “The Souvenir Part II” will be distributed by A24 in the US. Hogg, Swinton shot another movie with the same production company tandem shortly after “The Souvenir Part II” entitled “The Eternal Daughter,” and is currently in post-production.

“The Souvenir Part II” is scheduled for release on October 29 via A24. Additionally, as mentioned, it’s playing at the New York Film Festival this week. Watch the new trailer below.