The Man I Love
In late 1980s New York, Jimmy (Rami Malek), a theater artist living with AIDS, throws himself back into his work, rehearsing a new stage production while surrounded by lovers, family, friends, and fellow artists. Ira Sachs brings us into a world where fear and extraordinary creative energy exist side by side, capturing a generation determined to keep making art, falling in love, having sex, laughing, and living. Rather than turning the AIDS crisis into a conventional illness story, Sachs finds its presence in the relationships, silences, bodies, and choices of the people who lived through it. Malek gives Jimmy a magnetic, mercurial presence, while Tom Sturridge, Rebecca Hall, and Luther Ford bring intimacy, affection, and shifting loyalties into his world. Music becomes another language, with performances revealing what Jimmy cannot always say. Following Peter Hujar’s Day (MVFF48), Sachs returns to New York with a deeply sensual portrait of art, desire, community, and survival. —João Federici
Director/s
Ira Sachs
Ira Sachs was born in 1965 in Memphis, Tennessee. His feature films include Peter Hujar’s Day (MVFF48), nominated for five Film Independent Spirit Awards, including Best Director; Passages (2023); Frankie (Cannes Competition, 2019), Little Men (Grand Prix, 2016 Deauville American Film Festival); Love Is Strange (2010); Keep the Lights On (2012), winner of Berlinale’s Teddy Award; Forty Shades of Blue (2005), winner of Sundance’s Dramatic Grand Jury Prize; and his first feature, The Delta (1996). His short, Last Address (2010), honoring a group of NYC artists who died of AIDS, is part of the Whitney Museum and MoMA’s permanent collections. A 2013 Guggenheim Fellow, Sachs is also the Founding Director of Queer|Art, a nonprofit that provides support for LGBTQ+ artists.