Rami Malek was visibly moved Wednesday night as The Man I Love received an eight-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival, with the actor shedding a tear while the Palais applauded Ira Sachs’ deeply emotional new drama.
The response was not exactly a quiet one, though Cannes does have a long history of turning applause into a timed endurance event. Still, the moment landed with unusual force because of the film’s subject matter and Malek’s central performance as a man facing the end of his life while still reaching for art, desire, and connection.
What Ira Sachs said after the screening
After the screening, Sachs addressed the audience and framed the film as a story about what people leave with one another, especially when time is limited.
“This is a film about what we can bring to each other through art, through love, through pain, through memory,” Sachs said. “And I hope there are some memories we share from this evening for the festival and our love of cinema.”
Sachs directed the film and co-wrote the screenplay with Mauricio Zacharias, a frequent collaborator. Their story is set in New York City in the late 1980s, inside a theater world shadowed by the AIDS crisis.
