You Were Never Really Here (released as A Beautiful Day in France and Germany) is a 2017 neo-noir crime psychological thriller film written and directed by Lynne Ramsay. Based on the 2013 novella of the same name by Jonathan Ames, it stars Joaquin Phoenix, Ekaterina Samsonov, Alex Manette, John Doman, and Judith Roberts. In the film, a traumatized mercenary named Joe (Phoenix) is hired by a politician to find and rescue his daughter who has been kidnapped by a human trafficking network in New York City, which Joe is instructed to destroy by any violent means. The film was co-produced between the United Kingdom and France.
An early cut premiered at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival in competition, where Ramsay won the award for Best Screenplay and Phoenix the award for Best Actor. The film was released by StudioCanal in the UK, on 9 March 2018, and by Amazon Studios in the U.S., where it began a limited release in Los Angeles and New York on 6 April 2018, and a wide release on 20 April. It received critical acclaim, with Ramsay's direction and Phoenix's performance garnering high praise.
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Plot
Joe is a traumatized hired gun who specializes in rescuing trafficked girls, using brutal methods against their captors. He cares for his elderly mother in his childhood home in New York City. Joe has flashbacks of the abuse he and his mother faced from his violent father, and his brutal past in the military and FBI, and is troubled by suicidal thoughts.
