Familiar Touch (M)

For anyone who has felt themselves change, but never disappear - a coming-of-old-age story that belongs to us all.

Amid the haze of fading memory and shifting desires, Ruth, a retired cook, quietly navigates her transition to assisted living. With grace, wit, and the enduring threads of her identity, she deals with her changing sense of self and her bonds with those who care for her. As her surroundings grow unfamiliar, something unexpected begins to take shape - what if we glow most warmly at the edges of memory?

Cast: Kathleen Chalfant, Carolyn Michelle, Andy McQueen

Director: Sarah Friedland

★★★★½ "A quiet film that encourages you to lean towards it" EYE FOR FILM

★★★★ "By treating Ruth's experience with compassion, Friedland has crafted a tender, observational film that illuminates the dignity in vulnerability and the persistence of selfhood even as memory fades. This is empathic filmmaking and one of the year's best." DIRECTOR'S CLUB

"Familiar Touch is a film about forgetting, but it’s also a reminder - as moving, sincere and gracefully unadorned as any I’ve seen in some time - of the actor’s art." WALL STREET JOURNAL

"transcendent in its ability to take a challenging topic and fill it with hope, depth, and emotion from start to finish" SCREEN RANT

"poignant in all the right ways and quietly devastating thanks to incredible work from writer-director Sarah Friedland and actress Kathleen Chalfan" FANDOMWIRE

"Friedland’s film, as sharp as it is soft, conveys both the terror of losing the life you recognize, and the intermittent, fragmented joy of finding it again." VARIETY

"Familiar Touch feels radical in its quiet honesty, and breathtaking in its dignified compassion...stunning" LITTLE WHITE LIES