Before discussing The Man I Love in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2026, Ira Sachs had made Peter Hujar’s Day world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival 2025 and later at the Berlin Festival in the Panorama section. The film is taken from the book Peter Hujar’s Day, which reports the transcription, recently rediscovered, of a conversation recorded in 1974 between author Linda Rosenkrantz and his dear friend, photographer Peter Hujar (1934–1987).
The film is part of Linda Rosenkrantz’s project to document a day in the life of several artists (including Chuck Close). On 19 December 1974, Hujar visited the author in his apartment, covering his previous day in detail. His is a story that interweaves acute observations, candid introspection and irony, able to evoke both the creative ferment and the precariousness of the 1970s New York, returning the profile of a demanding, sagacious artist and viscerally dedicated to his art.
Ira Sachs has approached Rosenkrantz’s work moved by a deep admiration for Peter Hujar, an avant-garde lawmaker famous for his black and white shots and for his predilection towards intimate subjects: from close ties with friends and lovers to landscapes, nudes and animals. A key figure of the undergorund scene of the Lower East Side of New York between the 1970s and 1980s, Hujar has always distinguished himself for his artistic rigour and independence.
Peter Hujar’s Day, la trama
Peter Hujar was one of the most vital and uncompromising photographers of his generation. In 1974, she sat down with her friend writer Linda Rosenkrantz to describe her day, as part of a series of interviews scheduled by Rosenkrantz with various artists.
Ira Sachs draws on the recording of that conversation, turning a single afternoon into the portrait of an artist, of a friendship and of the downtown scene that shaped both.
Set entirely in Linda’s apartment in Manhattan, the film reproduces with imagination their intimate exchange while Hujar recalls the previous 24 hours in detail: a meeting with Allen Ginsberg, a call from Susan Sontag, the negotiations between art, money and survival in the New York of the 1970s. What begins as the portrait of a single day turns unexpectedly into a “joycean” reflection on the life of an artist and the passage of time.
Il cast
Ben Whishaw: Peter Hujar
Rebecca Hall: Linda Rosenkrantz
Arrived in New York in 1988, Sachs reflects on that generation defining it courageous and deeply committed. “They produced works of extreme honesty and, precisely in that honesty, they became radical,” the director observed. While not initially looking for a film subject, Sachs found it among the pages of Peter Hujar’s Day: “I arrived at the last page, I realized that I wanted to draw a film from that material.”.
Turned with the 16mm Kodak film material, Peter Hujar’s Day is produced by Jordan Drake, Jonah Disend and Fred Burle. The striking reconstruction of the New York “downtown” of the 1970s was vividly realized by the scenographer Stephen Phelps (Anora).
L’articolo Peter Hujar’s Day film by Ira Sachs on MUBI proviene da Dituttounpop.it.
