Familiar Touch

Community Partner: Creative Aging in Nyack

After the film there will be a discussion with Dr. Marc Rothman, CEO and co-founder of Lizzy Care, whose mission is to make dementia care easier, more human, and truly supportive for families, caregivers, and the people they love.

 “The mystery of Ruth’s mindfulness — which ebbs and flows — is at the core of Chalfant’s brilliant, award-worthy performance. Hers is a virtuosity that doesn’t ask for pity or applause or even link arms with the stricken-but-defiant disease-playing headliners who have gone before her. Chalfant’s Ruth is merely, momentously human: an older woman in need, but no less expressive of life’s fullness because of it. It’s a portrayal to remember, for as long as any of us can.” – Los Angeles Times

 “At the center of everything, is the overwhelming tenderness and humanity of Kathleen Chalfant, who unlocks the mysterious keys of Alzheimer’s for us all to understand, with no histrionics and no bursts of emotional self-indulgence. – Observer

“Familiar Touch is a film about forgetting, but it’s also a reminder—as moving, sincere and gracefully unadorned as any I’ve seen in some time—of the actor’s art. It stars Kathleen Chalfant, who has spent much of her career in New York theater, as Ruth, a woman with dementia, and 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.” – Wall Street Journal

“Friedland, who also wrote the film’s script, is not given over to histrionics or blaring displays of emotion, instead asking us to follow Ruth and experience the world through her eyes. The impact is profound.” – IndieWire

“There’s a profound tenderness in Sarah Friedland’s affecting first feature and a rare empathy.” – Screen International

“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.” –  The New Yorker

“The delicacy of what [Chalfant] does in this role is astounding.”  – New York Magazine

“Wondrous. [An] exquisite drama. Explores the human mind in all its frailness and glory.” – Sight and Sound

“Our society treats aging like a curse never to be mentioned instead of the inevitability it is, but Friedland’s film challenges us to see it head-on.” – Washington Post

“A film that could have settled for being a masterclass in technique, but instead goes deeper, exploring questions of artistry, authorship, legacy.” NPR

“Had The Christophers just been a cross-generational punch-up, the sort of flinty showdown designed to throw off pleasurable sparks, you’d still walk away content. It remains a conduit for two of the best performances you’ll see all year.” – David Fear, Rolling Stone

“The Christophers is largely a comedy, but it’s also about all that we gain and lose with age, and about how we sometimes need young people to bring us back to ourselves.” – Stephanie Zacharek, TIME

“Having lost the inspiration that guided him to greatness, Julian is an artist who can no longer paint, and Lori is an artist who has lost all confidence in there being a place for her work in the larger world. For all the undercurrents about fame, commodification, and reputation that flow through The Christophers, at its core is a more plaintive lament about what it feels like to love something that doesn’t love you back.” – Alison Willmore, Vulture

“Go see The Christophers. Show up, and support a tiny, talky experiment that has no relationship to IP or sequels or box-office projection. It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s also never, as Lori grudgingly notes about Julian’s work, uninteresting. And in this cultural moment, that’s an authentic win.” – Elizabeth Weitzman, Time Out

“The Christophers is a work of criticism that deftly distinguishes different approaches to criticism.” ­– Justin Chang, The New Yorker 

“Brims with hilarious dialogue, lightly satirical observations of a culture that treats art as a commodity, and satisfying payoffs to a number of story elements planted early on.” – Seth Katz, Slant Magazine

“In the end, this film about artists becomes a work of art in its own right. The more you look at it, the more its many components reveal themselves to you.” – Chase Hutchinson, The Wrap

“Ian McKellen plays Julian Sklar, a sardonic art legend who meets his intellectual match in frank preservationist Lori Butler (Michaela Coel). In a test of wits and wills held mostly in a single-setting, Soderbergh pushes both characters to return to their former passions through philosophical conversations that reflect his own career.” – Robert Daniels, Screen International

“It bats about ideas pertaining to art, commerce, ownership and legacy with dexterous aplomb and boasts two equally superb leads who make the material crackle.” – David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

“The Christophers is a talky, at times incredibly funny, comedy drama with plot reversals that make it feel like it’s on the verge of a thriller. It doesn’t end up there, at least not strictly, but it’s unpredictable enough to never make us entirely sure just where it’s heading.” – Benjamin Lee, Guardian

“There’s no room for anything shy of genius in The Christophers, a crackling original drama about artistic legacy in all its facets, directed by Steven Soderbergh , from a script by Ed Solomon (No Sudden Move) and starring two top-notch English actors of wildly different backgrounds and styles, Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel, at the top of their respective games.” – Peter Debruge, Variety

“With Ian McKellen in superbly crotchety form and Michaela Coel exuding chilly cunning, it’s further proof that Soderbergh remains one of American Cinema’s most inimitable, and adventurous, auteurs. – Nick Schager, The Daily Beast