Eleven-year-old Bud finds escape from the grayness of ’50s Britain through trips to the cinema and in the warmth of his family. But as he gets older, the agonies of the adult world, the casual cruelty of bullying, the tyranny of school and the dread of religion, begin to invade his life.

An autobiographical portrait of a lost Eden, The Long Day Closes is one of the great British films. Conjuring his mid-century youth through an impressionistic series of piercing tableaux, dreamy dissolves, and evocative songs, Terence Davies’ masterpiece is a work of searing emotional recollection.