Metrograph

Winner of the Best Director award in the Orizzonti section of the 81st Venice International Film Festival, Friedland’s quietly compassionate narrative feature debut avoids sensationalism and treacly sentiment in telling the story of Ruth (Kathleen Chalfant, exceptional), an eightysomething woman with advancing dementia who has to adjust herself to a new life in an assisted living facility. A keenly observed character study of its central character and the people around her—H. Jon Benjamin, as Ruth’s son, and Carolyn Michelle, as her principal caretaker, both in fine form—that is by turns tragic, tender, and disarmingly funny. “A small miracle of realigned empathy… By sticking to Ruth’s perspective, the camera attuned to every emergence of childlike glee, adult pleasure or sharp-witted flash of authority, we come to see a person, not a patient.” —Los Angeles Times

Distributor: Music Box Films

Q&A with director Sarah Friedland and actor Kathleen Chalfant on Sunday, October 12th