Familiar Touch

The winner of a trio of awards at Venice, this profoundly empathetic drama creatively portrays a woman’s experience of dementia from her own vantage point. Ruth Goldman’s talent as a professional cook has granted her a prosperous life. In her eighties, she’s still impeccably groomed, charming and flirtatious, even when meeting friends in an unfamiliar country club or bustling round a new test kitchen. So it comes as a shock to Ruth when she realises that her ‘friend’ Vanessa is her assigned memory-care nurse, and that her busy schedule is taking place within the walls of an aged-care home that she previously agreed to move in to. As Ruth’s unreliable memory ebbs and flows, she wrestles with where she is and how she got there. But through it all, she never doubts herself. Familiar Touch premiered in the 2024 Venice International Film Festival’s Orizzonti section, winning prizes for director Sarah Friedland and star Kathleen Chalfant, as well as the Lion of the Future award for best debut film. Having previously worked in aged care, Friedland forged an extraordinary collaboration with a real-life California retirement home, whose residents both appear on camera and were involved behind it. A strikingly unusual representation of dementia that immerses viewers in Ruth’s embodied experience through a kinetic, tactile cinematic vocabulary, Familiar Touch imbues its protagonist’s lived moment with dignity and autonomy rather than brooding on what has been lost. “Familiar Touch feels radical in its quiet honesty, and breathtaking in its dignified compassion.” – Little White Lies