Ira Sachs, the American independent filmmaker known for intimate character studies like "Keep the Lights On," "Frankie" and "Passages," has turned to one of the most charged chapters in recent gay history for his new film — and cast a marquee name at its center.
The film
"The Man I Love" is set in New York in the 1980s and stars Rami Malek, who won an Academy Award for "Bohemian Rhapsody," as a beloved queer entertainer who keeps mounting his work even as illness closes in during the AIDS crisis, The Hollywood Reporter reported. The ensemble around him includes Tom Sturridge and Rebecca Hall, per the trade coverage. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and has continued on the festival circuit this summer, and it is being handled internationally by the French company MK2 Films, Variety reported.
A European education
Speaking at festival appearances, Sachs has framed the film through his long immersion in European cinema, describing himself as an American filmmaker who took his cues from European directors and their naturalistic, ensemble-driven style rather than from Hollywood's taste for big transformations, Screen Daily reported. He has also been candid that the economics of American independent film pushed him toward European financing to keep making the kind of movies he wants to make.
The subject
The story reaches back to a world Sachs knew: he has said the film draws on the artists and performers of 1980s New York, and on firsthand accounts of the era's mix of creativity and loss. Rather than a straightforward biography, he has described the central character as a composite — a way to hold several histories in one figure. For Malek, it is a change of register from the blockbusters and thrillers that have defined much of his recent work, toward a smaller, character-driven drama. The result, arriving on the festival circuit this summer, is both a period piece and, in Sachs's telling, a personal reckoning with a decade that shaped him.
