The 20 Best Movies of 2019 So Far

The best-reviewed movie released during the first six months of 2019 began collecting raves at Sundance early this year, where it was the unanimous winner of the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema competition. British writer-director Joanna Hogg (Unrelated, Archipelago, Exhibition) pulls from her own life experiences to tell the story of Julie (newcomer Honor Swinton-Byrne, delivering what could be a star-making performance), a well-off but inexperienced cinema student (and Hogg surrogate) who falls for the troubled Anthony (Tom Burke) in the 1980s. It's her first real love, and Julie finds herself giving too much of her time and (her parents') money to Anthony, to the exclusion of her friends and her budding career as a filmmaker. Swinton-Byrne's real-life mother, Tilda Swinton, plays her mother in the film. A sequel is already in production.

“The Souvenir clearly stands out as one of the year’s best films: pointedly personal art that somehow manages, in its specificity, to hit on something universal.” —Alissa Wilkinson, Vox