British film director and screenwriter Terence Davies, author of the 2022 film "Benediction," has died at the age of 77 after a brief period of illness, his representative said Saturday.
"I am deeply saddened to announce the death of Terence Davies, who passed away peacefully in his sleep after a brief illness on Saturday 7 October 2023," his agent, John Taylor, said in a statement sent to the British news agency PA.
The statement includes the Latin words "Umbra Sumus," by the poet Horace, and an excerpt from British writer Christina Rossetti's poem "When I Am Dead, My Dearest," both of which had special meaning for Davies, according to the PA.
Born in Liverpool (northwest of England) in 1945, he entered the world of cinema in the 1970s and early 1980s, with his trilogy of autobiographical films "Children", "Madonna And Child" and "Death And Transfiguration", to subsequently make nine more feature films.
Last year he released the Netflix film "Benediction," based on the life of English poet Siegfried Sassoon and starring Jack Lowden and Peter Capaldi.
In 1988, the filmmaker won the Cannes International Critics Award for "Distant Voices, Still Lives," a film based on his own family memories of working-class life in Liverpool in the 1940s and 1950s.
He was starred by stars such as Gillian Anderson, who played Lily Bart in her adaptation of Edith Wharton's "The House Of Mirth," while Rachel Weisz played Hester Collyer in her 2011 adaptation of Terence Rattigan's 1952 play "The Deep Blue Sea."
In 2016, "Sex And The City" singer Cynthia Nixon played nineteenth-century poet Emily Dickinson in "A Quiet Passion," written and directed by Davies.