Familiar Touch

Local title
Toetav käsi
Director
Sarah Friedland
Country
USA
Year
2024
Festival
28th Black Nights Film Festival
Programme
Best of Festivals
Genre
drama
Subject
elderly people, love, mental health, loneliness

A coming-of-(old)-age movie about Ruth, an 80-year-old woman with the onset of dementia who must move into a home.

“Familiar Touch” uses small details, such as sights and sounds, to capture Ruth’s increasingly confused groping for identity and points of recognition, as her world slowly but surely unravels. It's a low-key drama with great acting that neatly avoids clichés about aging. It is sad, tender and, in the middle of it all, sometimes comical. Just like life itself.

In her elegant feature debut, film artist and choreographer Sarah Friedland delivers a deceptively conventional study of an elderly woman’s transition to assisted living. Filmed at an actual care home, the attention to mundane detail and peripheral workplace dynamics are particularly resonant, anchoring and contextualising the character’s dementia-driven spiral.

Best Director, Best Actress and Best Debut Film Award from Orizzonti, Venice 2024.

Director
Sarah Friedland
Screenwriter
Sarah Friedland
Cast
Kathleen Chalfant, Carolyn Michelle, Andy McQueen, H. Jon Benjamin
Producer
Alexandra Byer, Sarah Friedland, Matthew Thurm
Cinematographer
Gabe Elder
World sales
Memento Films International
Runtime
Language
English
Other festivals
Stockholm, London
Director
Sarah Friedland

Screenings

9th Hall Apollo Kino Coca-Cola Plaza
Screening030903 / Toetav käsi
Screening duration
1st Lux Hall Apollo Kino Coca-Cola Plaza
Screening100103 / Toetav käsi
Screening duration
Saal Kino Sõprus
Screening123101 / Toetav käsi
Screening duration
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