"Peter Hujar's Day" is one of those films whose title is almost humorously straightforward, yet only gives a hint of what the experience of watching it is actually like. While true that it is about a day in the life of the late photographer Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw) that he recounts to his close friend Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall) in mundane,

Sundance: The filmmaker said making dialogue between photographer Peter Hujar and a friend "suspenseful, emotional, not boring, was an interesting challenge."

Below, I spoke to Sachs about his approach to adapting Rosenkrantz’s slim tome, what his film has to say about the artist’s life in the 1970s and now, and the classic independent short films that influenced the making of Peter Hujar’s Day.

"Peter Hujar's Day" reunites writer-director Ira Sachs with his "Passages" star Ben Whishaw, and Sachs revealed at TheWrap's Sundance Studio presented by World of Hyatt that his latest effort began while he was still making that searing 2023 relationship drama.

It's based on a transcript of Hujar's's description of what he did on one day, which in the film becomes anything but ordinary.

Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall portray Peter Hujar and Linda Rosenkrantz in Ira Sach's latest Sundance premiere, 'Peter Hujar's Day'

Ira Sachs got fired by his manager. The most indie spirited of independent filmmakers had refused to play the game for too long, and the bill had finally come due. “I understood it in a way,” Sachs, more than a decade and a half-dozen features removed from that experience,