TILL HUMAN VOICES WAKE US centers around Sam Franks (Lindley Joiner), the son of a man who doesn't show him any warmth or affection. Sam isn't sure of how to handle the feelings in his life. But he can't help responding to Silvy (Brooke Harmen). She is his closest friend and they communicate perfectly in many ways. When we first meet Sam, he'd an adult speaking to a classroom of psychiatric students about how and why people block memories. His father's death forces him to return to the place where he grew up, where it seems that his own repressed memories are waiting for him, along with a mysterious woman named Ruby (Helena Bonham Carter) who is having some memory problems of her own and is not even sure who she is. Sam meets her briefly on the train and then sees her try to drown herself. He rescues her, then takes her to the home he shared with his father to help her remember who she is. But the glimmers of memory seem to connect back to a devastating loss that Sam himself isn't willing to remember.