Directed by Terence Davies • 1988 • United Kingdom, Germany
Starring Freda Dowie, Pete Postlethwaite, Angela Walsh

Winner of the International Critics’ Prize at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival, Terence Davies’s revelatory feature debut heralded the arrival of one of Britain’s finest filmmaking talents. Loosely based on the director’s own family and upbringing, DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES presents an evocative account of working-class life in Liverpool, England, during the 1940s and ’50s. Births, marriages, and deaths—and a sublimely expressive use of music—provide the underpinning for a film that is beautiful, heartbreaking, and resonant but never sentimental.