The thriller "You Were Never Really Here", written and directed by Lynne Ramsay and based on the novella of the same name by Jonathan Ames, ranks among the most acclaimed films of Phoenix's career. The film is about Joe (played by Phoenix), a traumatized former FBI agent and Gulf War veteran who tracks down missing girls for a living. To prepare for the film, Phoenix was adviced by a former bodyguard who goes on international missions to rescue children suffering sexual exploitation and abuse by human traffickers; he gained a significant amount of weight and muscle for the part. Phoenix was Ramsay's first and only choice to play the veteran, with Ramsay calling him "my soulmate in making movies". The film premiered at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, where it received universal acclaim and earned Phoenix the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor. Justin Chang of the "Los Angeles Times" described Phoenix's performance as "the most rivetingly contained" work of his career and Dominick Suzanne-Mayer of "Consequence" noted that his evocative manners in the film, led to him giving career-high work and "the kind of haunting turn that only comes around a few times every decade or so."