---
title: "Ira Sachs and Rami Malek Bring an AIDS-Era New York Drama to the Screen"
description: "The independent director Ira Sachs has made 'The Man I Love,' a drama set in 1980s New York starring the Oscar winner Rami Malek as an ailing queer performer determined to keep working. After a Cannes premiere, the film is touring festivals — and Sachs is talking about the European cinema that shaped it."
category: "Entertainment"
category_url: https://herald.la/category/entertainment
author: "Anjali Rao"
published: 2026-07-02T09:55:44.000Z
updated: 2026-07-02T09:55:44.000Z
canonical: https://herald.la/article/ira-sachs-and-rami-malek-bring-an-aids-era-new-york-drama-to-the-screen
tags: ["Ira Sachs", "Rami Malek", "film", "Cannes", "entertainment"]
---
# Ira Sachs and Rami Malek Bring an AIDS-Era New York Drama to the Screen

The independent director Ira Sachs has made 'The Man I Love,' a drama set in 1980s New York starring the Oscar winner Rami Malek as an ailing queer performer determined to keep working. After a Cannes premiere, the film is touring festivals — and Sachs is talking about the European cinema that shaped it.

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](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/rami-malek-ira-sachs-the-man-i-love-cannes-exclusive-1236589502/). 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](https://variety.com/2026/film/global/ira-sachs-cannes-the-man-i-love-rami-malek-mk2-1236712530/).

## 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](https://www.screendaily.com/features/ira-sachs-on-his-new-york-aids-musical-the-man-i-love-and-working-with-rami-malek-he-has-a-magnetism/5216833.article). 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.

## Sources

- [Inside Rami Malek and Ira Sachs' queer drama 'The Man I Love'](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/rami-malek-ira-sachs-the-man-i-love-cannes-exclusive-1236589502/)
- [Ira Sachs on his New York AIDS-era film 'The Man I Love' and working with Rami Malek](https://www.screendaily.com/features/ira-sachs-on-his-new-york-aids-musical-the-man-i-love-and-working-with-rami-malek-he-has-a-magnetism/5216833.article)
- [Ira Sachs' 'The Man I Love,' starring Rami Malek, boarded by MK2 Films](https://variety.com/2026/film/global/ira-sachs-cannes-the-man-i-love-rami-malek-mk2-1236712530/)