With its first showing at the Hobart State Cinema 23 October 2025, Familar Touch is a film that will leave you mindful of the challenges of a fading memory as one ages.

To accompany our review of this movie Tasmanian Times is pleased to provide our readers with 3 complimentary double passes and 3 “Buy 1 Get 1 Free” passes.

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Familiar Touch – A Tender, Unflinching Portrait of Memory’s Retreat

★★★★☆

Familiar Touch doesn’t explain dementia – it asks us to inhabit it. In this deeply intimate character study, director Sarah Friedland has crafted something rare – a film that resists easy sentiment, choosing instead to observe with unwavering patience as Ruth Goldman’s fierce independence collides with the inexorable fading of her memory.

Ruth’s performance is nothing short of extraordinary.

From the opening scenes, where her son Steve moves her into the Bella Vista facility, we’re plunged into a world of profound disorientation. Ruth doesn’t recognise Steve as her son—she insists she “didn’t want kids” and is “not a mother.”

What makes the film remarkable is its refusal to reduce Ruth to her diagnosis. Yes, she can’t remember where she is or why. But watch her recite the borscht recipe of potatoes, beets, caraway with absolute crystalline clarity.

“Could somebody who had, you know what, have told you that borscht recipe?” she demands, before rattling off her biographical details “My name is Ruth Goldman. I was born in Brooklyn, New York… anything else?” These aren’t just memory exercises. They’re declarations of selfhood, proof that the essential Ruth remains even as her recent memory dissolves.

The film finds its emotional centre in Ruth’s relationship with Vanessa, her carer and nursing student. Their dynamic illuminates the peculiar intimacy and inevitable tensions of memory care. When Ruth attempts escape and later confronts Vanessa,

“I trusted you”, the betrayal she feels is utterly real, even if its premise is confused.

There are moments of unexpected grace. Ruth working in the facility kitchen, her hands remembering what her mind cannot. Her friendship with Pearl. The speed dating evening where she’s warned away from “memory lane, as it’s popularly known.”

The film allows Ruth her humour, her flirtations and her continued assertion of self even as that self fragments and reforms into unpredictable patterns.

The minimal dialogue proves essential rather than gimmicky. We’re forced to attend to what’s unsaid – the long silences, the repetition of routines, the way time itself becomes elastic and unreliable. Scenes unfold in real time; a bathroom routine, standing uncertain in a doorway, the slow work of getting dressed and we must watch with the discomfort of watching someone search for meaning in moments that refuse to cohere.

This is not an easy watch.

The pacing is deliberate to the point of challenging, asking viewers to surrender the comforts of narrative momentum this film earns every unhurried minute. It’s a film of profound emotional honesty that captures the fleeting lucidity, the bursts of humour and the pervasive sadness that accompany this disease.

Familiar Touch is necessary viewing – difficult, yes, but deeply humane. It asks us not to understand dementia but to witness it and in that witnessing, to honour the person who remains.

Director & Writer: Sarah Friedland (this is her debut feature film)

Lead Actress: Kathleen Chalfant as Ruth Goldman

Supporting Cast:

• Carolyn Michelle as Vanessa (Ruth’s caregiver)
• Andy McQueen as Brian (Director of Health and Wellness)
• H. Jon Benjamin as Steve Goldman (Ruth’s son)

Producers: Sarah Friedland, Alexandra Byer, Marni E. J. Grossman, Regina K. Scully, Abby Sher and Betsy Ware Fippinger

Cinematographer: Gabe C. Elder

Awards: Winner of ‘Best Actress’ at the 2024 Venice Film Festival and the ‘Someone to Watch Award’ at the 2025 Film Independent Spirit Awards

Director Friedland previously worked as a memory care worker and still teaches art to older adults, which informed her authentic approach to the subject matter.

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