Peter Hujar's Day (2025)

Direction: Ira Sachs
Country: USA 

Based on Linda Rosenkrantz’s book drawn from a 1974 interview she conducted with photographer Peter Hujar in her apartment, Peter Hujar’s Day recounts not only his activities during the previous day in New York but also sheds light on his inner life, emotions, and temperament. This chatty, experimental two-hander heightens intimacy between interviewer and subject, buoyed by finely attuned performances from Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall. Through dialogue alone, it vividly evokes the energy of New York City’s 1970s art scene.

Ira Sachs—known for films such as Love Is Strange (2014), Little Men (2016), and Passages (2023)—approaches the material with an informal, almost documentary-like directness. Yet, Peter Hujar’s Day doesn’t crackle with overt excitement and often seems content simply to invoke figures like Allen Ginsberg, Fran Lebowitz, Susan Sontag, and Peter Orlovsky. Whether that is enough depends largely on the viewer’s mood and their interest in the subject matter.

Set entirely within a confined space, the film nonetheless allows for a few subtle surprises to emerge from its corners. Ultimately, it is Whishaw and Hall who hold everything together, giving the dialogue its weight, rhythm, and emotional grounding.

Passages (2023)

Direction: Ira Sachs
Country: USA

Ira Sachs, the director of Love is Strange (2014) and Little Men (2016), follows up with Passages, an intense drama film that’s neither kitschy nor unrealistic. The film’s Paris is a place where lust and artistic ambition can coexist; and that city atmosphere seems to suit Tomas (Franz Rogowski), a German filmmaker who abandons his longtime English husband, Martin (Ben Whishaw), to have an affair with a woman, Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos). 

Propelled by desiring forces and emotional ebbs and flows, the film marks a tough period of transition in the lives of these three characters. There’s this cumulative toxicity spread by an electric narcissist who lives according to his own pleasures, without taking others into consideration. Tomas’ unsettling ego is harmed when his dominance fails. Conveying exactly that, Rogowski elevates a story that, although meandering on occasion, is implacably lucid. It’s a painful view of the failures, doubts and losses of love.

Sachs is proficient in capturing the push-and-pull of relationships, and we can feel the jealousy, frustration and tension oozing from the scenes co-written with Mauricio Zacharias, who teams up with the director for the fifth time. In the case of the female character, the screenwriters understood that quiet desperation is often more moving than noisy suffering, and we do feel commiseration for her.

Passages has the ability to be simultaneously disciplined and unpredictable. Even if it doesn’t come with the power of Sachs’ previous works, this is still a lavish and opulent story that ends pungently at the sound of free jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler’s “Rejoice Spirit”.