Overview
- Director Ira Sachs builds the script largely from a rediscovered 1974 interview transcript found in 2019 in Hujar’s Morgan Library archives and later published by Magic Hour Press.
- Ben Whishaw embodies photographer Peter Hujar as Rebecca Hall plays interviewer Linda Rosenkrantz in a staged conversation set mostly in her Upper East Side apartment.
- The film avoids flashbacks and archival footage, relying on narration and performance to evoke the day’s events and the broader 1970s art world.
- Shot by Alex Ashe on textured 16mm, the production intentionally shows clapperboards, a boom mic, and untrimmed film edges to foreground cinematic artifice.
- Reviews describe the film as both a portrait of New York’s downtown milieu and a quiet requiem for artists lost to AIDS; Hujar died in 1987 at age 53.