Peter Hujar’s Day

(Ira Sachs, US 2025, 76 min., DCP)

Deceptively simple in premise, the newest film from Ira Sachs (Passages) is based on the most unlikely of sources: transcripts of a taped conversation between photographer Peter Hujar and writer Linda Rosenkrantz. The idea was Linda’s — to ask her friends to document a day and relate it back to her, in the hope that close examination would reveal not only how the waking hours of a day can be filled without seemingly accomplishing anything but also that doing nothing can somehow mean everything. While the tapes were lost to time, transcripts of the interview resurfaced and were published in 2021. Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall take on the roles of Hujar and Rosenkrantz in this surprisingly mesmerizing film.