In his debut feature, which won the International Critics Award at Cannes, Davies again revisits the past, this time leavening the tragic with the heartening. Told in a series of tableaux that fluidly navigate the working-class world of a Liverpool family in the 1940s and 1950s, Distant Voices, Still Lives reveals the horrors of that family life as it also features its celebratory moments and the extraordinary resiliency and strength of its women. Pervading so much of this world as Davies envisions it is the emotional impact of music as it emanates from the radio, is performed in the parlor, and is belted out in sing-alongs at the neighborhood pub. While "it rains a lot in Terence Davies’s memory," as one critic has noted, in this autobiographical meditation Davies rediscovers among the ruins of his youth the beauty and feeling that would one day allow him to become an artist.