“Familiar Touch,” opening in theaters Friday, confounds the usual expectations of what a movie focused on dementia might be.

Unlike Anthony Hopkins’ Oscar-winning portrait of an agonized, terrified and terrifying dementia victim in “The Father,” “Familiar Touch” emphasizes what remains as our sense of self diminishes.

Director-writer Sarah Friedland uses her own experience to tell the story of Ruth Goldman (Kathleen Chalfant) who we first meet on the day her son brings her to an assisted care facility.

“We filmed in a real retirement continuing care community in Pasadena, California,” Friedland said in a joint Zoom interview with Chalfant.

“I’m coming from a background as both a memory caregiver and also I teach filmmaking to older adults in different community settings. As I was writing the script it became clear that we needed to make this film not only as an anti-ageist character study, but the production had to match the ethos of the story.

“I wanted to make it in collaboration with real older adults and caregivers.”

Chalfant, 80, knew exactly where to start with bringing Ruth’s perceptions and reality to life.

“In this case, the easiest way to say where I began is with my best friend, the playwright Sybille Pearson, best known for the play ‘Sally and Marsha’ and I think for the book for the Broadway musical ‘Baby.” She has dementia, and we’ve known each other since 1973.

“We’ve always known each other’s secrets — and now only one of us knows the secrets. Or actually, I guess, two of us know the secrets; only one of us remembers them.

“So when I got this script, it seemed I understood Ruth through my friendship with Sybille and my experience with her dementia, which was, in a way, her last visit.

“Certainly, it’s been her gift to me,” she said of Pearson, who is 88. “Because I learned how to be Ruth from Sybille. Which is that she quietly observes and is deeper, perhaps, into her own world.”

“Playing Ruth,” she continued, “was, in a way, like an extended acting exercise. Because when you study acting, what they tell you is that you’re supposed to ‘live in the moment.’

“That’s, of course, as everybody knows, easier said than done, because there are an awful lot of distractions in the moment. But people with dementia do actually live in the moment. They’re unmoored from the past and not looking to the future.

“So if there was a method, that was my method in playing Ruth.”

With this extraordinary role, where does Chalfant go next?

“We actors all fear that the last job we had is the last job we’ll ever have — until the next job comes.”