The cast also includes Tom Sturridge, Rebecca Hall, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach.
Malek described Sachs as unusually attuned to performers, crediting him with drawing out work he might not have reached elsewhere.
“Ira is an actor’s director, among all the other things he can do,” Malek said. “We believed in each other.”
What Malek says Ira Sachs brought out in him
Malek was expansive in his praise for Sachs, whose films are often known for their close attention to intimacy, identity, and emotional pressure. The actor said the director’s body of work has already made its case.
“The canon of his work speaks for itself,” Malek said. “What a unique artist that we can all cherish. These are timeless films that Ira has put into the world. They will live on and we’ll go back to them for feelings that certain aspects of cinema don’t give us. There’s great intimacy and empathy.”
That description also gives a useful sense of why Malek’s role in The Man I Love matters. The film places him inside a story shaped by illness, art, desire, and fear during the AIDS crisis, a period that carries deep personal and cultural history for queer communities and for New York theater life in particular.
It is also another queer role for Malek, who won the Academy Award for best actor for playing Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody.
Why his Oscar win still carries weight
Malek’s 2019 Oscar victory made him the first performer of Egyptian descent to win best actor. At the Cannes talk, he said that milestone still feels larger than the award itself because of what it has meant to people who saw something of themselves in it.
“It’s one of the greatest achievements [because of the] hope it’s imbued in so many people all over the world, especially where my family is from in Egypt,” Malek said.
He connected that reaction to the broader experience of migration and belonging.
“All over the world, I think people can relate to what it feels like to be an immigrant… that comes with some weight,” he said. “To be able to connect to that accomplishment in some way and hopefully inspire anyone fills me with some sense of pride that is greater even than doing the work itself.”
For an actor who has often spoken through transformation on screen, the comment lands as a reminder that awards are not only industry trophies. Sometimes they become public signals, whether the winner asked for that responsibility or not. Conveniently, the Oscar did not come with a manual.
The Man I Love premieres in competition at Cannes on May 20.
