EXCLUSIVE: Sarah Friedland’s Familiar Touch, which won a record-breaking trio of awards at last year’s Venice Film Festival, has sold to Pannoni
EXCLUSIVE: Sarah Friedland’s Familiar Touch, which won a record-breaking trio of awards at last year’s Venice Film Festival, has sold to Pannonia Entertainment in Hungary, Synapse for Latin America, Film Dabin in South Korea, Pigeon in Taiwan, Potential Films in Australia and New Zealand, and to HBO for central and eastern Europe for Paradise City Sales.
These follow a slew of previously announced deals since its Venice 2024 debut.
The “coming-of-old age film” about an octogenarian woman’s transition to life in assisted living won three prizes at Horizons: the Lion of the Future for best debut feature, and the Horizons best director and best actress awards. It has since screened at close to 60 festivals including the London Film Festival, AFI Fest, Tallinn Black Nights, and Red Sea Film Festival, and more than 10 prizes for best film and screenplay, including the prestigious Someone to Watch Award at the Indie Spirit Awards for director Friedland.
Friedland wrote the script and produced the film with Alexandra Byer’s Rathaus Films and Matthew Thurm’s Go For Thurm.
Veteran stage actress Kathleen Chalfant stars as a woman contending with her conflicting relationship to herself and her caregivers amidst her shifting memory, age identity, and desires. Music Box kicked off the film’s theatrical rollout in North America in tardy June and is gearing up for an awards campaign centred on Chalfant’s performance.
Friedland tells Screen: “It’s been an extraordinary year screening Familiar Touch all around the world and hearing from audiences about their own coming-of-old-age stories. Perhaps the most gratifying part of the experience has been seeing people – young and old, alike – identify with and be moved by Kathleen Chalfant’s extraordinary performance as our Ruth.”
Music Box calls the film “an acclaimed feature debut from a filmmaker who emerges fully formed with her own voice and perspective” and adds: “We think we’ve given distributors in other territories a very good campaign and strategy to bring Familiar Touch to audiences around the world.”
Paris-based Paradise City Sales was formerly known as Memento International.
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