Speakers

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 – Luigi De Laurentiis Award for Debut Film and the Horizons Award for Best Director. In addition to Friedland’s honors, the film’s lead actress Kathleen Chalfant received the award for Best Actress, making Familiar Touch the most awarded film selected for the Horizons category in the festival’s history. On the heels of her success at Venice, she won an Independent Spirit Award in the “Someone to Watch” category.

Her previous work has been showcased at leading venues and festivals, including the New York Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, BFI, MoMA, BAM, and the Performa Biennial. She has received support from institutions including Film at Lincoln Center, the Jerome Foundation, Panavision, Foundation for Contemporary Art, the Bronx Museum, and Berlinale Talents. In 2023, Friedland was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film and from 2021 to 2022 was both a Pina Bausch Fellow for Choreography and a NYSCA/NYFA Fellow in Film/Video.

She is a graduate of Brown University’s department of Modern Culture and Media.  For the last eight years, Sarah has been working in creative aging, as a care companion to New York City artists with dementia and cognitive impairment, a facilitator of intergenerational film projects, and a teaching artist working in older adult communities.