Use field from current node in filter in view
Niall Murphy's concept is correct but there are some differences between how it's performed in D8 and D7. Here is the code I ended up using which was successful.

function my_module_views_pre_view(&amp;$view, &amp;$display_id,&amp;$args){
    if($view-&gt;id() == 'news'){
        if($view-&gt;current_display == 'block_2'){
            $current_node = \Drupal::routeMatch()-&gt;getParameter('node'); 
            if(!empty($current_node)){
                $focus_area = $current_node-&gt;field_focus_area-&gt;entity-&gt;id();
                $args[0] = $focus_area;
                $view-&gt;setArguments($args);
            }
        }
    }
}