Festival Predictions

2024 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Sarah Friedland’s Familiar Touch

Published on November 11, 2023

After a decade of short film and installation work, filmmaker (and choreographer) Sarah Friedland danced into her feature film debut and has been in post for a significant part of 2023. Featured as part of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film 2023 and selected for the 2023 batch of U.S. in Progress at the American Film Festival in Wroclaw participants, Familiar Touch was perhaps an amalgamation of her previous creative items plus working with and in care facilities for the elderly. We learned that she was an assistant to Steve McQueen, Kelly Reichardt and veteran American indie producer Mike S. Ryan, her debut is backed by indie producers Matthew Thurm and Alexandra Byer.

Gist: Described as a coming of (old) age film. It follows an octogenarian woman’s transition to life in assisted living as she contends with her conflicting desires and self-narratives amidst her shifting age identity and memory.

Production Co./Producers: Matthew Thurm and Alexandra Byer.

Prediction: Next.

Sales: TBD.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).