Terence Davies, director of The Deep Blue Sea, poses for a portrait in September 2011 throughout the thirty sixth Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto, Canada.

Carlo Allegri/AP

conceal caption

toggle caption

Carlo Allegri/AP

Terence Davies, director of The Deep Blue Sea, poses for a portrait in September 2011 throughout the thirty sixth Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto, Canada.

Carlo Allegri/AP

British screenwriter and movie director Terence Davies died on Saturday on the age of 77.

According to the critically acclaimed filmmaker’s official Instagram account, he died peacefully at residence after a brief sickness.

Davies was finest identified for autobiographical movies similar to Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes in addition to his adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, starring Gillian Anderson.

Born in 1945, Davies grew up because the youngest of 10 youngsters in a working class Catholic household in Liverpool, England. His father, who was violent and abusive, died of most cancers when Davies was a younger boy.

In a 2016 NPR story across the launch of his film Sunset Song, the filmmaker stated life obtained higher after that. But he nonetheless struggled to reconcile his spiritual upbringing together with his homosexuality.

“I have a great deal of difficulty in forgiving things that have been done to you in the past that have damaged you,” he stated. “And in the end you have to be able to forgive, otherwise you’re always chained to the past.”

Davies’ movies have earned vital acclaim over his greater than 40-year profession. In 2002, the British movie journal Sight & Sound listed his breakout 1988 autobiographical characteristic Distant Voices, Still Lives among the many prime 10 movies made inside the earlier 25 years. French movie auteur Jean-Luc Godard was additionally a fan.

But as a filmmaker working outdoors of the mainstream Hollywood system, Davies struggled to get his movies made.

“The industry is geared to making money, and it’s geared around stars,” Davies told NPR’s Scott Simon in 2022 when his movie Benediction got here out. “How can you compete with a film that cost $40 million?”