Film Forum

WINNER!
Luigi de Laurentiis Award for Best Debut Film
Horizons Awards for Best Director & Actress
Venice Film Festival 2024

Ruth (acclaimed stage actress Kathleen Chalfant) is an elegant, meticulous woman in her 80s. Her home in southern California is sunny and well-appointed, with greenery and tasteful mementos from a life filled with family, adventures, and pleasures. Ruth is going on a journey: Her body is moving to full-time memory care facility; her mind and spirit into the unknown. In her debut feature, filmmaker Sarah Friedland invites the viewer into this journey gently, allowing us to experience both the disorienting shadows and bright micro-moments along with Ruth, as she loses pieces of her past self, while still living — engaging with the present-time flesh and blood, and kindness, of her caregivers.

Presented with support from The Endowed Fund for Emerging Filmmakers

FREE COMPANION TICKETS
We want to ensure that older adults and their caregivers have the chance to see FAMILIAR TOUCH in theaters together. Thanks to the generous support of Simbelle Productions, we have 100 free companion tickets to give away to these guests. During the run of FAMILIAR TOUCH, on screenings presented Monday through Thursday, June 23 – 26, mention promo code "COMPANION" at the box office to add one free companion ticket to any purchased ticket. Can be redeemed in person only; subject to availability.

2024     90 MIN.     USA     MUSIC BOX FILMS

Reviews

“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