Ira Sachs Casts Rami Malek Without Seeing Bohemian Rhapsody

Rami Malek has been cast in Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias’ Cannes competition premiere “The Man I Love,” playing Jimmy George, a New York performance artist drawn into an AIDS-era clockwork of survival, art, and community—while Sachs says he never watched “

Rami Malek’s first scenes as Jimmy George begin after a near-fatal hospital stretch. He returns to his life in downtown New York having almost died from AIDS complications. still recuperating. and throws himself into what his friends and collaborators know may be his last role—a race against time that shapes the entire momentum of Ira Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias’ new film.

“The Man I Love” premiered in competition at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. and it lands on an era Sachs describes with equal parts beauty and brutality. At the American Pavilion. presented by IndieWire. Sachs and Zacharias talked about what it meant to be young and gay in New York City across the ’80s and ’90s—when evenings could be filled with energy while fear and loss sat just beyond the lights.

Sachs said. “I was hanging out with people who were making plays and writing The Village Voice articles. and going out at night. and then there was this darkness around us because it was the high point of the AIDS epidemic.” He added. “There was fear. certainly. but there was also rage. which I think is wonderful. and then there was the pursuit of joy. So there was a lot of intention upon living. and living hard. and living emotionally and intimately with groups of people.”.

Zacharias echoed the emotional contradiction—celebration alongside something terrible pressing in. “There was a lot of dancing, a lot of great music, there was a lot of great energy, even though there was something really terrible going on that was directly affecting my life.”

The film is the sixth feature collaboration between Sachs and Zacharias. and they described building the story around the formative time they experienced after meeting two decades ago. The downtown experimental theater scene becomes the set of that memory—centered in 1989. when Jimmy’s fictional experimental theater group. The Mechanicals. is rooted in the kind of spaces that defined late-night culture.

The Mechanicals is based on downtown performance center PS 122. which Sachs said he attended regularly when his first NYC job was as the assistant to then-performance artist Eric Bogosian. Sachs also pointed to the Wooster Group as a guiding reference. and he said Jimmy was inspired by Wooster performer Ron Vawter.

Sachs recalled Vawter’s last moments with a story that still lingers. “Ron died in 1994 of AIDS. but really the week before his death. he was performing on stage in Belgium. ” Sachs said. “He actually cut that performance short because he wasn’t well. and he got on a plane to go home. and he died on the plane. So literally. until the moments before. he was making art. and I think that was such a moving story and image for us.”.

The film’s emotional machinery doesn’t just run on memory—it also runs on craft. Zacharias and Sachs said one of the final pieces of the script was deciding what Jimmy’s final production and role would be. Sachs then pitched an idea that would become a cornerstone of the movie: The Mechicals would adapt an obscure 1974 Québécois film called “Il Etait Un Fois Dans L’Est” (“It Was a Time in the East”). which Sachs had seen at a Toronto LGBTQ film festival in 1990.

“It’s a beautiful movie that, for me, felt like if [director Rainer Werner] Fassbinder made ‘Nashville,’” Sachs said. “In ’89. because I was a theater director also. I would’ve been intrigued about making a play based on this movie. My friends made plays based on Fassbinder films all the time; that was a regular thing people did in the late ’80s. And then it was this funny thing where you had a crew of 100 people all trying to recreate this 1974 film that no one had ever heard of.”.

Another entry point into the story is Carmen. a character Sachs said is an interesting role-within-the-role—one that opens a natural doorway for Malek’s performance. Music. Sachs emphasized. is built into Jimmy’s life: from impromptu dinner-party jam sessions to Jimmy’s showstopping nightclub performance of “The Man I Love. ” and to “Look What They’ve Done to My Song. Ma” at his parents’ wedding anniversary.

That musical thread also makes the casting feel newly visible to audiences who will see Malek perform again after his Oscar-winning role as Queen frontman Freddie Mercury in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” But Sachs said the decision had nothing to do with that fame.

“I’d not seen ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ before casting Rami,” Sachs said. “I said he had no real interest or need to see it.” He continued. “I actually tend to cast on a very limited palette. I only saw, like, 20 minutes of ‘Mr. Robot’ and I thought. ‘That guy I can work with.’ And it’s really about something very specific that I see in a performance.”.

While Malek does deliver a beautiful rendition of George Gershwin’s “The Man I Love” in the film. Sachs shared a surprising origin story for the movie’s title. He said the name came from the 1941 movie “That Man I Love.” The 1941 semi-noir nightclub film directed by Raoul Walsh stars Ida Lupino and. Sachs said. its plot shares little with the script he and Zacharias wrote. Still, Sachs connected to the feeling it carries.

“[The Walsh film] is about 74 minutes long, and it’s suffused with emotion,” Sachs said. “The emotion is so rich, and there is this balance between drama and melodrama, which is our lives. Really, that’s what our lives are like, drama and melodrama.”

As for where the film goes next, “The Man I Love” premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, and it is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

Ira Sachs Rami Malek The Man I Love Cannes Film Festival 2026 Mauricio Zacharias Jimmy George The Mechanicals PS 122 Wooster Group Ron Vawter Bohemian Rhapsody Mr. Robot George Gershwin That Man I Love Raoul Walsh Ida Lupino IndieWire American Pavilion