His final two feature films were centered around the lives of influential literary figures, Emily Dickinson in A Quiet Passion (2016) and Siegfried Sassoon in Benediction (2021).

[6] After that introduction to filmmaking, Davies attended the National Film School, completing Madonna and Child (1980), a continuation of the story of his alter ego, Robert Tucker, covering his years as a clerk in Liverpool.

Those works went on to be screened together at film festivals throughout Europe and North America as The Terence Davies Trilogy, winning numerous awards.

In reviewing Distant Voices, Still Lives, Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote that "years from now, when practically all the other new movies currently playing are long forgotten, it will be remembered and treasured as one of the greatest of all English films".

[10] Davies's next two features, The Neon Bible and The House of Mirth, were adaptations of novels by John Kennedy Toole and Edith Wharton respectively.

[11] After completing The House of Mirth, Davies intended to make an adaptation of Sunset Song, a novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon published in 1932, as his fifth feature, but financing proved difficult.

Scottish and international backers left the project after the BBC, Channel 4 and the UK Film Council each rejected proposals for final funds.

[14] In 2010, after completing Of Time and the City, Davies produced a third radio project, Intensive Care, a personal recollection of his youth and his relationship with his mother.

[4] In February 2023, it was announced that Davies was working on a film adaptation of Stefan Zweig's novel The Post Office Girl, though the project was subsequently abandoned due to a lack of funding.

[22] After his death, the script was revealed to be based on Janette Jenkins's novel Firefly, which focuses on the last five days in the life of playwright and composer Noël Coward.