NYWIFT Blog

By Briana Wilson

Welcome to NYWIFT, Sarah Friedland!

Sarah Friedland is a filmmaker and choreographer working at the intersection of moving images and moving bodies.

Friedland’s debut feature film, Familiar Touch, earned critical acclaim at the Venice International Film Festival last year, where she received both the Lion of the Future/Best Debut Film and the Horizons Award for Best Director. It was also screened as part of NYWIFT’s Member Screening series in 2025. 

On the heels of her success at Venice, she won an Independent Spirit Award (“Someone to Watch”) and has since been nominated for two Gotham Awards (Breakthrough Director and Best Feature) and another Film Independent Spirit Award (John Cassavetes Award).

(Photo credit: Anna Ritsch)

Welcome to NYWIFT! Could you give our readers a brief introduction to yourself?

Hi NYWIFT! My name is Sarah Friedland. I’m a filmmaker and choreographer with a background in movement-based and dance filmmaking. My debut feature film Familiar Touch premiered at the Venice Film Festival, was released in theaters this summer by Music Box Films, and is currently available to stream on Mubi.

Familiar Touch is a coming-of-old-age film starring Kathleen Chalfant as a woman transitioning to life in assisted living as she navigates her relationship with herself, her caregivers, and her family amidst her shifting memories and desires.

What brought you to NYWIFT? 

 My passion for being a part of a community of women in film. We need each other! The camaraderie, mutual support, and mentorship of other women in this industry has been pivotal to my career thus far. 

Did your passion for filmmaking and choreography form together, or separately at first? How did that journey begin for you?

 I’d say film and choreography were on a collision course towards each other from the beginning. I started off making films about everyday movement. When I first started experimenting as a student with choreography for the stage, I found myself craving visual control over scale and perspective – the frame was already in mind.

Dance filmmaking was a way for me to bring these two movement-based forms together. Each successive film of mine has had more and more scripted material and characters, so in some ways the progression to a narrative feature was quite organic from my dance films.

Which project shaped you the most as a filmmaker, and how would you describe the impact it’s left on you?

Definitely Familiar Touch. It was a decade-long journey that has shaped me in more ways than I can say. The impact I’d highlight most is on how I’d like to lead a cast and crew, and the shared principles we hold together. Familiar Touch was an opportunity for me to practice my own style of creative leadership and seek out collaborators who were interested in being a part of the process we were creating: collaborative, community-based, and anti-ageist.

While I think each film requires its own process, I’m grateful to have learned that you need not replicate the methods and values of anyone else’s set – you can make your own and decide what integrity looks like for you as a director. I want to carry that with me always.

You have an incredibly detailed approach to filmmaking (for example, using movement scores and sound scripts to map out your film Familiar Touch). Could you tell us more about these detailed methods and how you discovered they work for you?

I like to build cinematic worlds through an accumulation of detail. While writing and prepping, I tend to learn things about my characters and their world in little crumbs. I’ve found that my best work comes from collecting these pieces over time rather than investing in the fantasy that it will somehow arrive all at once.

Following from this practice, I end up with very detailed information that I like to collect and then make additional documents for myself and my collaborators. This takes on many forms: dance notations, camera diagrams, transcripts of sounds, lists of rules, etcetera.

I’m really fascinated by forms of script-writing that don’t look like screenplays and am continuously experimenting with my own notations. 

While filming Familiar Touch, did you find any overlaps in the experience of directing the film and your previous experience as a caregiver of aging adults?

 Absolutely! So much of caregiving is about slowing down and getting still enough to notice details in the behaviors of the person you’re caring for. I think that same level of attention and presence is needed while watching actors perform. I’m their witness and need to bring the same quality of embodied and detailed perception to be able to provide the direction and feedback needed to support their best performances.

What are you excited to explore next in your career journey?

I’m excited to continue exploring ways to make humanist dramas with an embodied or choreographic language. I love finding characters through their movements and writing scripts as movement scores for actors to animate. I’m writing the next one with this guiding principle very much in mind. 

Connect with Sarah Friedland on her website www.motionandpictures.com or on Instagram at @_motionxpictures.

 Familiar Touch is now available to watch on VOD platforms. Learn more at www.familiartouchfilm.com or on Instagram (@familiartouch and @musicboxfilms).

(All images courtesy of Sarah Friedland)