"I wish I could go back and tell her that all the "no's," all the years of stagnation and rejection, don't mean anything about her skill or value as an artist.

Sarah Friedland, director of Venice's multiple prizewinner FAMILIAR TOUCH joins for a HFF Hopeful Conversation

I was so incredibly moved watching Sarah Friedland’s debut feature, FAMILIAR TOUCH. The choices were bold and distinct, and always spot on. Sarah manages to avoid sentimentality but delivers a deep emotional wallop. It always feels completely truthful. It also features at its center one of the top performances in recent memory. It may be a quiet film, but it is absolutely thrilling.

This film should be with us for a very long time and we are fortunate to have Sarah join us a few questions and answers. Please be sure to see FAMILIAR TOUCH in the theater on the big screen.

Synopsis: Ruth (Kathleen Chalfant), a retired cook, prepares breakfast in her sunny and cozy kitchen — a dish she seems to have made many times before, although small and puzzling errors now punctuate her comfortable routine. When her son (H. Jon Benjamin) arrives to dine with her, she mistakes him for a suitor. Their “date” takes them to an assisted living facility, which Ruth does not remember that she had previously selected for herself. Among her fellow memory care residents, Ruth feels lost and adrift, certain she has found herself somewhere she does not belong. As she slowly begins to accept the warmth and support of care workers Vanessa (Carolyn Michelle) and Brian (Andy McQueen), she finds new ways to ground herself in her body, even as her mind embarks on a journey all its own. Writer-director Sarah Friedland’s coming-of-old-age feature compassionately follows the winding path of octogenarian Ruth’s shifting memories and desires while remaining rooted in her sage perspective.

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Ted: To start, I just want to say I love your movie and so much about it. At the core is "Ruth" and Kathleen Chalfant's remarkable performance, but I think if you hadn't offered such a precise method of linking her in her surroundings, starting of course with her home and then the care facility where she moves, I may have not connected as deeply. I love how chosen the frames were, but yet still always in a reserved way -- which is of course much like her character. She is of the spaces and the spaces are of her. Can you tell us a bit about that process and how you worked with Gabe Elder, your cinematographer.

Sarah: I'm lucky to have been collaborating with Gabe and our production designer Stephanie Osin Cohen for a decade now, so we've built up a shared language between us, without which we never would have pulled this film off within the limited time and resources we had. The three of us met as PAs and started making short films together. It was quite moving and meaningful to me that we all got to make our first features together on Familiar Touch.

One of the earliest choices I made with Gabe was committing to the idea that the camera would be placed in the position of a caregiver. As a caregiver, you need to be close enough to read and interpret the subtlest shifts in behavior and body of the care recipient. But at the same time, you need to be distant enough to allow them to feel their own physical autonomy. The vast majority of the frames in the film are playing within that modulation of distance.

One of the first things you learn when training to do memory care work, as I did, is that postural differences can be very threatening to a person with dementia. You're encouraged to kneel down and meet someone at eye level. So most of the time we are at Ruth's eye level and our choices to elevate above or lower down from this level were very carefully chosen exceptions to this rule.

Gabe and I both like creating logics for each film's cinematography -- which we name aloud to each other and then write down -- and then choose when to defy our own rules. We also decided very early that the majority of shots would be static frames so that the tiniest of disturbance in Kathleen's expression or body would register at a greater scale or volume amidst the stillness of our frame. This is a principle we've used a lot in our shorts in which we are framing non-virtuosic, microgestures -- social choreographies -- and trying to shoot them in such a way that they become choreographic despite their lack of "dancerly" vocabulary.

Another part of Gabe’s and my process was creating what we called "echoes" in our shotlist. Gabe, Stephanie, and I spent a lot of time preparing as a trio for how to make the film a sensory experience for viewers: we wanted our audience to understand Ruth's perspective not through cognition but through sensation. Much of this emerges from the convergence of Kathleen's physicality, the texture and color in Stephanie's design as framed by Gabe, and the tactile and ambient sounds of Eli Cohn (our sound designer). We planned meticulously for how these would harmonize but I wanted there to be an additional physical experience for the viewer that might register only subconsciously.

I tracked all of the gestures and moments of touch and contact in the film (more on this below) and Gabe and I used the same lenses and optical diffusion, as well as similar framing, for those that were in some way resonant or twinned with one another. For example Ruth's open palm in the car ride and her open palm in the exam room share the same lens, filter, and very similar frames. We hoped that viewers might feel a sensation of reverberating or looping time, as Ruth does, but not be able to quite articulate or identify why. This idea of an "echo" is an example of one of the camera logics we like to write out together in prep.

They say certain animals have languages that are communicated just with their eyes, but Kathleen Chalfant must be the queen of that species. You and she said so much with few words. As soon as the movie finished, I wanted to watch it again to study her expressions and although I was familiar with her, I immediately felt I wanted to rewind the world so we could have watched her as frequently on the screen as we are served far lesser talents. I have to suspect that despite casting her and knowing she could hold this film with her gaze, no one could be prepared for the incredible gift that was occuring in the making of the film. When did you realize the magic of what you were capturing and did you have to make adjustments to serve it as well as you did?

I knew of her magic from the first shot. We searched for the right Ruth for years and years and only found Kathleen very close to the start of filming. Our first shot was the elevator scene in which Vanessa is taking Ruth to her room for the first time and we rack focus from Vanessa to Ruth. I'll never forget looking over at Gabe and seeing his eyes well up and exchanging a look: we found her. We both knew immediately Kathy was the one.

I had a gut instinct when Kathleen and I first met, but from that moment of the first take I knew the film would work. It's a film that is entirely dependent on the power and delicacy of whomever is playing Ruth, and it had to be Kathy. I knew that to a certain degree while writing, but I only fully understood it after we picture-locked. Watching Kathleen in that first take, I felt that everything had shifted, and that somehow she was about to change my life. I say that because, coming from a background making experimental films with non-actors, I genuinely didn't know if I'd be any good at or like working with actors. The experience of directing and collaborating with Kathleen was one of the most profound artistic experiences of my life and has instilled in me a deep desire to continue collaborating with actors and making scripted films. I learned so much from her.

I anticipated having to make adjustments but we really didn't have to. Kathleen and I found that we spoke entirely the same language. We found ease and trust between us almost immediately. We shared a feeling that our work together was to find all of the Ruth's that Ruth had been and to slip between them together. We decided early on that we would allow Ruth's dementia to give us the liberty to play each scene untethered from the one prior and find Ruth in the moment, rather than in a plotted timeline.

Kathleen was incredibly precise in honoring what I had scripted and, reciprocally, I found much joy and discovery in letting Ruth go and become hers. Witnessing the delicacy of what she created with a character that, over a decade in, had become sort of tired to me, was an extraordinary privilege.

I look at your movie and I say "that was uncompromising" -- and I mean that in the best way. You are an artist who reached very high, and it seems to me you got what you wanted. I also assume you had to work on a very limited budget, and for many of us that automatically means compromises. How did you turn limitations into assets? Did you have to abandon things you wanted?

One of the biggest limitations was shooting days. The script draft that we planned to film was going to take around 25 days and in the end we only had the budget to shoot under 20 days. I sat down with my DP Gabe Elder and Production Designer Stephanie Osin Cohen one night during prep and we went page-by-page together trying to figure out what we could eliminate without the entire house falling down. It was a sort of table read but for omission and economy. In the end, I think this exercise in finding the most economical version of the story made the film so much better. In letting go of some plotting, we got closer to what Familiar Touch always was: a character study rooted in Ruth's embodied perspective. In getting simpler, getting quieter, the film found its strength.

Gabe and I did a similar pass through our shotlist and created a tiered system to prepare both for the fast speed we would need to film this in and also for filming in an environment where people's care and lives and work would necessarily take priority over our filming and we'd likely not be able to go over our allotted time in any given space. We went through and figured out how we might capture every scene in just one shot, then in two, in three, in four, etc. By going through this, we knew that if at the end of the day we only had time for one or two shots per scene, the film would still work. In the process, we discovered new ways of covering a scene we hadn't seen before and again the economy made our choices much stronger. I now want to do this with every film, even if we have more money or days.

If you were advising the you that was just beginning the process of making Familiar Touch what advice would you give yourself? Would you do anything differently?

I wish I could go back and tell her that all the "no's," all the years of stagnation and rejection don't mean anything about her skill or value as an artist. I wish I could tell her that the people saying the "nos" don't know anything more than she does about what this film will become. I wish I could tell her that her gut instinct that she can and will pull this off is more truthful than any of the market-based (and often-times patronizing) advice she received about why this film is unviable. I would tell her that her stubbornness around the need to make this is her greatest gift and not a form of lunacy. I would tell her that her beloved and ongoing and dedicated collaborators will help her get through the hardest parts of making a first feature.

There's not much I'd do differently because I learned so much from this process and its elongated timeline. I think the hardest part about a film taking this long to make (I wrote the first draft in 2012, my producers came aboard in 2017, we shot in 2023, and we are releasing in 2025...) is the psychological component. No matter how confident and persistent I felt, the accumulation of years and no's and bad industry advice did take its toll. Many friends let me cry to them about "my movie" ...thank god for friends.

When someone asks a director how did they prepare for the movie, I think the only true answer is "all through my lifetime" -- at least when a film is made well. That said, as much I feel only you with all you've experienced could have made this specific film, and how much we all will be thankful for that, I also am curious about what on your journey do you feel helped prepare you for the creating and execution of this specific film?

There were so many different tasks that I set for myself over the years to prepare. I'll share two.

The first is related to directing actors. Previously, I had made experimental dance films and installations with both professional dancers and non-professional performers. These films had rare use of dialogue and were usually spoken by non-actors. Going into Familiar Touch, I was most terrified of directing the dialogue-heavier scenes, especially with actors as talented and experienced as Kathleen, Carolyn, H. Jon, and Andy. So in the few months leading up to production, I hosted a bi-monthly salon in my living room with an actor friend, Hayward Leach. Each week he'd invite an actor or two to come with him and we'd pick a scene with a lot of dialogue from a recent movie. I'd direct them in the scene and at the end of the session, instead of me giving them notes on their performances overall, they'd give me notes on my notes, telling me what directions did and did not aid them in finding their character and performance in the scene. Practicing this ahead of time in a supportive and unpressured environment was so, so helpful for me.

Another thing I did was create lists and diagrams breaking down the gestural, textural, and sonic motifs and repetitions in the film. For example, I made a sequential list of everything Ruth touches, every time her hand moves of its own accord, etc. Our script was of course broken down in prep with great care by our script supervisor and AD by location, character, and time, as is typical for production. But these sensory threads were, in a way, more important to my own understanding of the film's architecture than the traditional script breakdown. I felt I needed to map out those threads for myself ahead of filming and outside of a screenplay format. Feeling very closely tethered to these sensory, formal components -- and having a means to carry and track their sequence -- allowed me the liberty to work with Kathleen in creating a character and performance that was unmoored in time. I think this comes from my choreographic background: I like creating alternative scripts and scores in addition to screenplays -- they help me think through patterns in time and space in a way that screenplay format doesn't always suffice for my imagination.

SARAH FRIEDLAND(Writer/Director) is a filmmaker and choreographer working at the intersection of moving images and moving bodies. Her work hasbeen presented in festivals and art spaces including the New York Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, Mubi, MoMA and the Performa19 Biennial.Sarah graduated from Brown University’s department of Modern Culture and Media and started her career assisting filmmakers including SteveMcQueen, Mike S. Ryan, and Kelly Reichardt. From 2021 - 2022, she was both a Pina Bausch Fellow for Choreography and a NYSCA/NYFA Fellow inFilm/Video, and was named to Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2023. Her short film trilogy, MOVEMENT EXERCISES, isdistributed by Video Data Bank. Sarah has been working in creative aging for the last eight years, as a caregiver to artists with dementia, and as ateaching artist facilitating intergenerational films and workshops for older adults. FAMILIAR TOUCH is her debut feature film.www.motionandpictures.com

Official Website

FAMILIAR TOUCH won three major awards at the Venice Film Festival -- Best Debut Feature, Best Director - Orizzonti, and Best Actress - Orizzonti and earned the director, Sarah Friedland, the Someone to Watch Award at the 2025 Independent Spirit Awards, and was named an NYT Critic's Pick, and received this rave review in the New Yorker.

You can see FAMILIAR TOUCH at Laemmle Royal, Laemmle Glendale, Laemmle Town Center 5 in Los Angeles starting 6/27 (as well as in San Francisco, San Rafael, Silver Spring, Detroit, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, Santa Barbara, Toronto, Vancouver, and Huntington). More cities to come -- full schedule/tickets here.

New York City Tickets

Find a theater near you. If you happen to be in San Francisco, lead actor Kathleen Chalfant in person July 1 at The Roxie.

Follow distributor Music Box on all social channels @musicboxfilms .

Film Channel: https://www.instagram.com/familiartouch/

Sarah Friedland’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_motionxpictures

“An exquisitely fragmentary portrait of memory loss…illuminates its protagonist’s condition with uncommon concision and grace, and with few of the formal and narrative strategies we’ve come to expect… Chalfant’s performance, for all its exquisite subtlety, is also furiously alive…This is a rare leading role for Chalfant, a veteran actor best known for her theater work, and it instills, among other things, a powerful desire to see her in more.”
– Justin Chang, The New Yorker

“A gorgeous drama…A breathtaking feature debut from Friedland, who comes right out of the gate with an assured narrative voice… Chalfant is a revelation as Ruth, taking the audience by the hand and guiding us through the many faces of this woman. It’s as if every moment of her life is a new scene, a different world she must adjust to.”
– Jourdain Searles, RogerEbert.com

“[Chalfant] gives an astonishing performance…she delivers the sort of performance that feels at once utterly authentic and like the product of long experience, on stages of all kinds and sizes. It is, in a word, a masterclass…The director also proves herself more than a mere steward of a great actress, putting together sequences of real artistry.”
– Zachary Barnes, The Wall Street Journal

“A deeply kinetic work. Friedland, who is also a choreographer, infuses the film with graceful bodily gestures and overtures to the senses. In its bounty of movement and sensorial pleasures, it finds its compassionate voice—even though the memories of the life Ruth lived before she entered the care facility are slipping away, her body is still expressive, still free to actively experience being alive. It’s rare for a work of art about cognitive decline to focus on what is rather than what’s lost.”
– Sarah Fensom, Reverse Shot

“The delicacy of what [Chalfant] does in this role is astounding.”
– Alison Willmore, New York Magazine

“WONDROUS. [An] exquisite drama. Explores the human mind in all its frailness and glory.”
– Ela Bittencourt, Sight and Sound