In the captivating sequel to Joanna Hogg’s 2019 coming-of-age film, The Souvenir, we are treated again to actress Honor Swinton Byrne as British film student Julie and her mother, Tilda Swinton, playing her onscreen mother. It had its North American premiere at this year’s New York Film Festival, where it marked the first time one of Hogg’s feature films—her fifth—was selected for the festival’s Main Slate section.

In the original iteration, affluent and sheltered Julie finds her innocence shattered when her boyfriend dies from a heroin overdose. The new film picks up the story immediately following in what is essentially a continuation of the same narrative. Boyfriend Anthony (Tom Burke) appears again, though in memories that become the inspiration for her graduation film, fueled by grief.

The autobiographical movie is set, again, in a realistic, Thatcher-era 1980s when Hogg herself was in film school. Electric typewriter keys clack, Joe Jackson blasts on the hi-fi, and movie rushes are screened on clunky computer monitors.

This installment finds Julie ready to make bolder choices on her own, as she tells a therapist that Anthony had guided (and manipulated) her with his stronger, albeit often insightful ideas and exotic tastes. For example, he had questioned her motivation in documenting shipyard workers: Was she working off “received” ideas about their lives? Shouldn’t she tackle subjects closer to home? On the other hand, he lavishly indulged her, taking her on a romantic getaway to Venice, including an evening at the opera in fancy dress.

New audiences will be apprised of the backstory, as it is revisited here, through the development of Julie’s autobiographical student film. We watch her dissecting her old life with the wisdom of hindsight as she constructs a fictional version of her relationship with Anthony. Those who saw the (highly-recommended) original and how its story unfolded will recognize details of the relationship on screen—she now wears Anthony’s pinstriped jacket as she dines in the hotel where they often ate.

Many of the same actors appear this time around too, as Julie socializes with the same friends and lives in the same house from her first year of school to her last. She casts in her project an admired film student, Garance (an assured Ariane Labed), as herself and turns to another, curly blond-haired Patrick (Richard Ayoade, a hilarious standout) for advice. In contrast to her awkwardness as a director, Patrick audaciously shoots his film while breaking the rules—until he can’t. “You’re forcing me to have a tantrum!” he announces on set.

Mom and dad live in an antiques-filled house with spaniels always at their heels. Here the British upper class is observed from Hogg’s evenhanded insider’s perspective: Mom opens her purse whenever Julie requests money. This time she asks for £10,000 for equipment to finish her thesis film, but leaves out the fact that the faculty have withdrawn the school’s support; they believe her script is unprofessional. “There’s a lack of precision about your thinking,” an instructor tells her during a panel review.

Nevertheless, Julie perseveres and conjures an experimental, dreamlike work from key episodes in her earlier life, including miniature models of the shipyard environment, masks representing the trip to Venice, and Anthony’s distant voice asking, “Do you have a couple of quid? Give me ten,” as well as, “You’re lost. You’ll always be lost,” which were quotes that stung.

With no formal training and just one small acting credit to her name, Swinton Byrne was not the immediate choice to play Julie, but Hogg had cast Swinton in the role of the mother and asked her for a recommendation. (Swinton had acted in Hogg’s film school graduation short in 1986, adding to the meta nature of The Souvenir and its follow-up.) Swinton Byrne is a natural, seemingly oblivious to the camera. She registers subtle emotions with such authenticity that the drama swirling around her seems real.

Souvenir Part II will open theatrically in the United States on October 29.