{"id":475016,"date":"2026-05-08T16:15:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T16:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/475016\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T16:15:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T16:15:13","slug":"exclusive-inside-rami-malek-and-ira-sachs-queer-drama-the-man-i-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/475016\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Inside Rami Malek and Ira Sachs\u2019 Queer Drama The Man I Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIra Sachs<\/a> had been talking about making some version of The Man I Love, his vividly sad but vibrant drama set in New York circa 1984, for over a decade by the time the moment to do it had arrived \u2014 and yet it was only well after production when he realized where it all came from. This was an instinctual work, mined from decades of memory. Sachs took on his first job in New York in 1984, then lived through a decade or so of \u201cdeep, painful and also transcendent experiences of gay life.\u201d That informed the texture of The Man I Love as much as the aftermath of the pandemic, during which Sachs confronted his increasingly intertwining relationships to art and mortality. And he was thinking a lot about pleasure, too: \u201cemotion and drama and story and color and skin and sex.\u201d Sachs threw this charged mix into a pot, started editing, and saw something profoundly autobiographical unfold.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was struck by the loss in the film, and I was struck by the sadness within that loss, but I was also struck by the strength,\u201d Sachs says now, in his first interview about his new movie. \u201cI\u2019m certainly the only person who could make this film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tQuietly, Sachs has built one of the steadiest, most well-regarded filmographies of his generation in American indies: He\u2019s directed seven features over the last 15 years, four of which went on to receive Spirit Award nominations for Best Feature \u2014 and that includes his two most recent efforts, the sexy Passages<\/a> and the talky Peter Hujar\u2019s Day. The Man I Love will premiere only 16 months after his latest, at the Cannes<\/a> Film Festival, his second placement in the Main Competition after the 2019 Isabelle Huppert vehicle Frankie. It stars Oscar winner Rami Malek<\/a> as Jimmy George, a beloved queer entertainer who\u2019s dying of AIDS \u2014 but remains determined to keep working, and specifically to mount a new play.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur intention was to make a film about life,\u201d says Sachs, who co-wrote with his longtime collaborator Mauricio Zacharias. Adds Malek, a longtime fan of the director: \u201cHe is such a unique filmmaker with a very, very specific perspective and voice that I wish more people were aware of. Hopefully this film exposes so many to what that man is capable of and has created over his body of work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJimmy was modeled after experimental artists like Ron Vawter, of The Wooster Group, and Frank Maya, a pioneering gay comedian \u2014 men who died young but fought to create until their last breath. Vawter, for instance, was on stage, unable to complete a theater piece, merely six days before he died on a plane. \u201cThere\u2019s something quietly defiant about making art in moments of uncertainty, and that refusal to disappear felt so moving to me and striking \u2014 there was a driving force emanating from me given what I was feeling,\u201d Malek says. \u201cIt began from somewhere very, very personal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tEbon Moss-Bachrach and Rebecca Hall (left), who play brother-in-law and sister to Jimmy in \u2018The Man I Love,\u2019 \u201cbuilt something so intimate and lived-in together,\u201d says Malek.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think about all these radical people who did not seem consumed with bourgeois success, though they were all struggling with the idea of sustainability, and they were not trying to fit in,\u201d Sachs adds. \u201cWhen I first described this film to a friend, I told him it was about a man who was trying to figure out what to do with the remainder of his life. If you imagine that you\u2019re going to no longer be in the world, what would you miss most? I wanted the film to be filled with those things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIf not a musical, The Man I Love is certainly Sachs\u2019 most musically driven film, drawing from classics like All That Jazz and A Star Is Born in the way that live singing not only defines the movie\u2019s sense of mood, but propels it narratively. \u201cThat was really interesting \u2014 how do songs become dialogue, even if it\u2019s not a musical?\u201d Sachs says. Malek gets a few showstoppers, including one heartrending scene where Jimmy performs Melanie\u2019s \u201cWhat Have They Done to My Song Ma\u201d before his family. While most of these tunes predate the \u201880s, for Sachs, it\u2019s evocative of the time all the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat sense of a living past extends to the ensemble, which Sachs built out with casting director Avy Kaufman. Jimmy\u2019s creative community is populated with dozens of real-life artists that Sachs has known over the years. They\u2019re often boisterously stuffed into the frame together in scenes of performing and partying. \u201cI know this wide variety of artists who are here with the most essential passion, of making work that they care about,\u201d he says. \u201cI took very seriously the casting of the theatrical troupe in the film, to find people who came with enough history that they could embody the depth of what it is to make theater in New York City.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tInspired by the likes of Robert Altman and Ken Loach, Sachs doesn\u2019t make movies with protagonists, per se; in his worldbuilding, he leaves room for spontaneity. The Man I Love embodies this through its steamy but aching love triangle between Jimmy, his partner Dennis (Tom Sturridge<\/a>), and their cute new neighbor who pursues Jimmy, Vincent (Luther Ford). Jimmy guides us into the milieu, but Sachs\u2019s camera will start following Dennis, say, out of one scene and into the next, as he grapples with his dying lover\u2019s appetite for life.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Malek, the bond between him and Sturridge, a longtime friend, proved crucial: \u201cWhen we first sat down to talk about this film, in a pub in London, I just remember Tom putting his hand on top of mine, and I felt this sense of being cared for\u2026. It always existed in these beautiful moments where we would catch each other\u2019s eye.\u201d The star was then kept intriguingly off balance by Ford (who makes a beguiling feature-film debut here), as Jimmy launches into a complex affair with Vincent. \u201cLuther has this ability to balance his youthful exuberance with a sense of having more life experience than one would expect from someone at that age,\u201d Malek says. <\/p>\n

\n\tJimmy remains the center of The Man I Love, of course, and Malek\u2019s mercurial and impassioned turn is unlike any in his career to date. They met after Sachs watched Malek\u2019s Emmy-winning work in Mr. Robot for the first time. \u201cThis actually wasn\u2019t a given,\u201d Malek says of getting cast in The Man I Love. \u201cIra was essentially seeing if I was the right guy for it\u2026. I don\u2019t think I\u2019m ever the obvious choice, to be quite frank, and I think that\u2019s nice. I choose quite carefully and this felt like a very big risk worth taking. And to that, it\u2019s a film about people who create and what that costs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u201cI realized I made a love story,\u201d Ira Sachs says. \u201cThat\u2019s unexpected for me about the film, but it was actually my original intention from 2012 when I first started thinking of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRami makes the film dangerous,\u201d Sachs says. \u201cThe story could change at any moment, and in that way, Rami aligns with Gazzara and Falk and Cassavetes. It\u2019s possible that he\u2019ll jump over the counter and steal the milk, like a scene from Mikey and Nicky.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSachs has increasingly worked outside of the American system to get his projects off the ground. The Man I Love is not only a New York story shot in New York, but is representing its country in unusual fashion for Sachs \u2014 it\u2019s one of just two American films in competition at Cannes this year, alongside James Gray\u2019s Paper Tiger, a signal of the challenges currently faced by the U.S. indie market.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you live within the context of American Independent cinema, you feel a little bit alone, to be honest,\u201d Sachs says. As soon as you start to think of yourself within a broader community of people all over the world \u2014 Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Europe \u2014 it just becomes exciting\u2026. I feel excited because I feel in conversation with a lot of people, but also anxious because I\u2019m exposing myself in a world I really respect.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSachs talks a lot about the notion of \u201cpersonal cinema\u201d \u2014 it\u2019s what he lives by in his filmmaking, and he\u2019s open about how each of his movies is imbued with a different, sometimes abstract form of memoiristic sensibility. Even with that, though, The Man I Love\u2019s autobiographical shades took him aback. \u201cAfter I shot this, I looked at my first film, Vaudeville, which was a backstage drama about a group of actors putting on a show with a narrative trajectory built around three men in a love triangle,\u201d he says. \u201cI was like, \u2018Oh, I just remade my first film \u2014 from 1989.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHe pauses, again considering the past-present continuum of this movie. He admits he\u2019s a little nervous about our interview, pointing to his glass of wine with a grin. \u201cI feel like I need to go into the world with this movie with as much of me as possible \u2014 and the fearlessness of Jimmy in the face of mortality is really beautiful,\u201d he says. \u201cIt came from a very deep place for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t**
The Man I Love premieres May 21 at the Cannes Film Festival. Stay tuned for more Cannes 2026<\/a> first looks and exclusives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ira Sachs had been talking about making some version of The Man I Love, his vividly sad but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268],"tags":[10404,190863,434,18,117,19,195535,17,208180,161255,23473,170332],"class_list":{"0":"post-475016","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-cannes","9":"tag-cannes-2026","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ira-sachs","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-passages","17":"tag-peter-hujars-day","18":"tag-rami-malek","19":"tag-tom-sturridge"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116539853208509582","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}