Ira Sachs Says Casting Rami Malek and Late-1980s New York Were Central to ‘The Man I Love,’ Discussing European Filmmaking Influences at Munich Festival

Ira Sachs discussed his approach to creating The Man I Love at a Munich International Film Festival Film Talk held ahead of the film’s screening at the festival on Tuesday, as The Man I Love director focused on casting, setting, and artistic influences that informed the production. Speaking in Munich, Sachs said the film’s casting of Rami Malek was a key creative decision, and he tied that choice to how he wanted the characters and their relationships to land on screen.

Sachs said he and longtime collaborator Mauricio Zacharias co-wrote The Man I Love, with the project designed to recreate late-1980s New York. In the discussion, Sachs emphasized the importance of period specificity, describing the setting as something the film needed to convey through details of time and place rather than through general nostalgia.

Malek stars in the film, which Sachs discussed as part of the festival’s signature programming for filmmaker conversations. The Munich Film Festival segment placed the director’s remarks alongside the screening, giving audiences a look at how a production that originated with a specific time and city can be shaped for international viewing.

Sachs also addressed the European filmmaking influences he said informed his work. At the Film Talk, he connected those influences to choices in tone and storytelling, positioning the film as not only rooted in New York but also shaped by a broader cinematic conversation that crosses borders.

The director’s comments followed the film’s earlier debut at Cannes. The Man I Love had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where it received a 10-minute ovation, according to Deadline’s report on Sachs’s Munich conversation. The Cannes reception, Sachs’s remarks suggested, helped underscore the film’s focus on performance and emotional cadence, elements that the director described as central to his process.

In Munich, Sachs’s remarks also framed the project’s themes through craft decisions that he described as necessary to make the period setting feel lived-in. The discussion placed attention on the practical challenges of reconstructing a past city environment while keeping the story’s emotional core accessible to contemporary audiences.

For festival audiences, the Film Talk format offered an added layer to the screening, with Sachs using his platform to explain how casting, collaboration, and European cinematic influences informed the final film. The film’s international trajectory, from Cannes to Munich, also highlights how late-1980s-set stories can travel through major European festival circuits when guided by both period detail and widely legible character work.