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Rami Malek stars in Ira Sachs’ emotional new drama about love, art and survival in 1980s New York. Now the film has taken centre stage at one of America’s biggest LGBTQ+ film festivals.
Rami Malek is returning to the spotlight with a very different kind of performance.
The Oscar-winning actor leads The Man I Love, the new queer drama from acclaimed filmmaker Ira Sachs, which was selected as the closing-night film of NewFest, New York’s LGBTQ+ Film Festival, on Sunday 25 October 2026.
Set against the AIDS crisis in late-1980s New York, the film explores the life of a gay actor determined to find love, connection and artistic fulfilment while confronting serious illness.
And unlike many historical dramas about HIV and AIDS, this story doesn’t simply focus on tragedy.
It makes room for joy, desire, friendship and the extraordinary creativity of queer communities.
What Is Rami Malek’s The Man I Love About?
Malek plays Jimmy George, a downtown theatre actor living with AIDS.
As he prepares for a new performance, Jimmy struggles with his health while searching for reassurance and affection from the people closest to him.
Those relationships include his partner Dennis, played by Tom Sturridge, his new neighbour Vincent, played by Luther Ford, and his sister Brenda, portrayed by Rebecca Hall.
The film follows Jimmy through rehearsals, relationships, dinner parties and intimate moments within New York’s vibrant artistic community.
According to the official NewFest programme, The Man I Love blends music, romance and drama to portray a community shaped by both creative freedom and the devastating impact of AIDS.
Its running time is 97 minutes.
A Story About AIDS, but Also About Living
The AIDS crisis devastated LGBTQ+ communities throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
Yet the people who lived through that period were never defined solely by illness.
They fell in love, created art, performed on stage, danced, argued, formed friendships and built communities.
That is one of the central ideas behind Sachs’ film.
Rather than presenting queer history exclusively through death and suffering, The Man I Love celebrates the extraordinary vitality of a community living through an unimaginable public-health crisis.
As AFI FEST’s official film description explains, music plays a central role, with several cast members performing songs throughout the story.
It’s a reminder that art was not simply an escape during the AIDS crisis.
For many people, it was also a means of survival.
Who Stars Alongside Rami Malek?
The film brings together an impressive ensemble:
- Rami Malek as Jimmy George.
- Tom Sturridge as Dennis.
- Rebecca Hall as Brenda.
- Luther Ford as Vincent.
- Ebon Moss-Bachrach in a supporting role.
Sachs, whose previous work includes Passages, Love Is Strange and Peter Hujar’s Day, has long explored the complexity of queer relationships.
His films rarely present love as something simple or perfectly behaved.
And honestly, would any of us recognise it if they did?
With The Man I Love, he turns his attention to a historical moment when love and human connection were often inseparable from loss and uncertainty.
Why NewFest Matters
NewFest is one of the United States’ most prominent LGBTQ+ film festivals, providing a platform for stories that are frequently overlooked by mainstream cinema.
Selecting The Man I Love as its closing-night feature is particularly fitting.
The film is set in New York, explores the city’s queer artistic history and reflects the lives of people whose contributions to culture were often overshadowed by the AIDS crisis.
It also arrives during an exciting period for queer cinema.
The Gayly Mirror previously highlighted The Man I Love in our guide to the best LGBTQ+ films at the 2026 London Film Festival, alongside other films exploring identity, community and queer history.
The film’s NewFest selection offers another opportunity for audiences to discover Sachs’ latest work.
Why Queer History Deserves More Stories Like This
For decades, films about gay men and HIV were often dominated by familiar narratives of suffering and death.
Those stories were important, but they were never the whole picture.
The lives of LGBTQ+ people during the AIDS epidemic were also filled with relationships, humour, art and resilience.
As The Gayly Mirror recently explored in our feature on queer pioneers in rock music, remembering LGBTQ+ history means acknowledging the people who shaped culture even when society tried to erase them.
The Man I Love approaches that history through the experiences of one man and the community surrounding him.
And that makes its message surprisingly contemporary.
Love Was There, Even in the Darkest Years
The AIDS crisis took countless lives and left lasting scars on LGBTQ+ communities.
But those communities were never simply collections of victims.
They were artists, lovers, friends, performers and families.
With The Man I Love, Ira Sachs and Rami Malek offer a story that remembers the pain without forgetting the beauty.
Because queer history isn’t just about what we lost. It’s also about everything we loved, created and fought to keep alive.
