63rd New York Film Festival Snapshot, Part 2: Ira Sachs' 1970s Reverie Peter Hujar's Day

PETER HUJAR'S DAY
(Ira Sachs, 2025, USA,
76 minutes) 

I may have missed The Mastermind, but I had no problem getting to the Walter Reade Theatre in time for the 9:15pm screening of Ira Sachs' ninth feature, Peter Hujar's Day, about which I had heard good things since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. 

First, I stopped by the concession stand to fuel up on caffeine lest I nod off after my two-hour sleep. I was wearing the super-soft One Battle After Another t-shirt I picked up at the preview screening the week before, and the charismatic cashier was so tickled that he waived the cost of my cold brew. I swear it almost made up for missing the Kelly Reichardt film. 

Though the pan-European Passages was a breakthrough for Sachs, a longtime New Yorker, I wasn't especially charmed by the central trio–or even the premise–despite my affection for all three actors, including Ben Whishaw, who plays American portrait photographer Hujar in the new film. 

If anything, Whishaw felt like a third wheel in Passages, which may have been intentional, but Martin wasn't given the chance to be much more than an appendage to Franz Rogowski's temperamental director, though Josée Deshaies' cinematography was lovely and the sweaters were fabulous.

Left: a set photo by Ira Sachs that suggests a David Hockney painting

Peter Hujar's Day is a smaller, more experimental film--DP Alex Ashe shot it with 16mm Kodak stock, which seems appropriate for both era and subject--and it may not appeal to as many tastes, but it was more to my liking.

The film is the closest Sachs has come to docudrama, since most every word comes from the transcript of an interview arts writer Linda Rosencranz conducted with Hujar on Dec 18, 1974. During the Q&A, I don't recall Sachs mentioning that she published it as a book, but he did say that she had planned to interview several other artists about their day, but ended the project after speaking with Hujar and painter Chuck Close. I'm not sure why, but a recent Guardian profile makes it sound as if she simply lost interest. (Sachs did mention the book at the first NYFF screening on Sept 27.)

The versatile Rebecca Hall (Resurrection) plays Rosencranz, and she doesn't have a lot to do, but she does it well. That may sound like faint praise, but it isn't. She has to be present while Hujar is talking. Sometimes, she speaks, sometimes not, but she's always listening and reacting. Sachs could have cast a lesser actor, but I'm glad he didn't, since Hall, a fellow director, doesn't shrink in the sensual, unfiltered presence of her scene partner. 

In the process of making the film, Sachs became friends with the now-91-year-old Rosencranz. Hujar, on the other hand, died from AIDS in 1987, which would also claim photographer friends David Wojnarowicz, with whom he had a close relationship, and Robert Mapplethorpe, who shared his interest in homoerotic portraiture. (At the Q&A, there were questions about Hujar's smoking in the film; he's never without a lit cigarette in his hand, which was probably true to life, but plays more alarmingly in 2025.)

Right: 1966 Peter Hujar portrait of Linda Rosencranz who he met in 1956

The 76-minute film is as much a profile of the photographer, at a particular moment in his life, as a showcase for the actor, who first won my heart in Todd Haynes' multi-persona Dylan depiction I'm Not There, in which he played French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud, which struck me then--and now--as perfect casting. He would go on to play another brilliant, doomed poet, John Keats, in Jane Campion's Bright Star, a highlight of her fine career.

During the Q&A, I looked around at the audience, and sensed a significant LGBTQ presence, which makes sense in terms of Hujar's overtly-queer work, in addition to the the fact that Sachs and Whishaw have often made or appeared in queer films, more so after Whishaw came out in 2013. (Near as I can tell, Sachs has been out since at least since 1996 when he debuted with The Delta.) The Whishaw contingent, in other words, was out in force.

Granted, Peter Hujar's Day isn't necessarily about being gay in the pre-AIDS 1970s; it's about one day in the life of a man who lived and thought like an artist, who knew every artistic New Yorker worth knowing, and who didn't make the money or find the fame he deserved during his abbreviated life.

Though Sachs opted not to include any of Hujar's photographs in the film, they're easy to find online, and they're quite extraordinary, especially his Old Hollywood-style portrait of Warhol Superstar Candy Darling, which Anohni would use for her Mercury Award-winning 2005 album I Am a Bird Now. 

I found the film touching, and I hope it spurs more interest in his work.

There are no further NYFF screenings, but Peter Hujar's Day opens in Seattle at SIFF Film Center on Fri, Nov 14. Images from Amazon (Peter Hujar's Day, 2022, Magic Hour Press), Films Boutique (Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall), and © Peter Hujar Archive / Cirko-Gejzír Mozi (Linda Rosencranz portrait).

A Snapshot of the 63rd New York Film Festival Plus a Detour to Take in a Broadway Show

Part 1: A Brief History of the 

NYFF and Me 

Left: full house at the Sept 29 screening of House of Dynamite

The last time I attended the New York Film Festival was in 2003, so I think it's fair to say it's been awhile. 

This year, the 63-year-old festival began on Sept 26 and runs through Oct 13, but I was only able to catch four-days worth of films. I was mostly in town to see a play, Waiting for Godot with Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, and took advantage of the timing to add the festival to my itinerary. Still, I caught more features (eight) and fewer shorts (none) than in the past. The NYFF doesn't bundle shorts with features anymore; instead they programmed seven shorts packages, five associated with the more adventurous Currents section. 

In 2003, I caught five features and four shorts: Denys Arcand's Academy Award-winning comedy-drama The Barbarian Invasions with Dominique Monféry's 58-years-in-the-making Destino, a Disney animated short co-written by Salvador Dalí; Johnnie To's PTU, a rousing policier, with Pascal Lahmani's mismatched WWII-era short From Head to Toe; Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Distant, a heartbreaking character study, with Charles Officer and Ingrid Veninger's experimental short Urda/Bone; and George Hickenlooper's Mayor of the Sunset Strip, a downbeat if engaging portrait of KROQ DJ and alt-rock tastemaker Rodney Bingenheimer, with Streetwise filmmaker Martin Bell's Twins, a documentary short made with his wife, photographer Mary Ellen Mark (both Hickenlooper and Mark have since passed away). 

Right: Mehmet Emin Toprak (1974-2002) in Uzak, aka Distant

I missed 2003's opening night film, Clint Eastwood's Boston thriller Mystic River, which I caught later that year, but I made it to the closing night film, Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams, which screened at Avery Fisher Hall (since renamed David Geffen Hall). The filmmaker was there, along with stars Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benicio Del Toro–two of whom are now starring in P.T. Anderson's One Battle After Another. This was in the pre-smartphone / pre-digital camera days–for me, at any rate–so I have no photographic proof of any of this. 

As for Iñárritu's jigsaw-shaped film, a popular screenplay structure at the time, I wasn't crazy about it–the last film of his I truly enjoyed was Amores Perros, his 2000 directorial debut–but I was impressed by the performances, Penn's especially, and spotting Lou Reed in the audience was a nice bonus. 

Sean Penn would go on to win an Oscar for Mystic River, which also received a nomination for Best Picture. This year's opener was Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt with Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, and Andrew Garfield. It sounded too much like something I had seen before, so I wasn't too sad to miss it, not least since every Guadagnino film interests me less than the one before, despite the fact that I loved 2015's A Bigger Splash, his idiosyncratic update of Jacques Deray's La Piscine, which actually betters the original in some respects, especially the character of Penelope (Dakota Johnson taking over from Jane Birkin), who becomes a more fully-rounded human being.

Left: I was there! Del Toro, Watts, Penn, and Melissa Leo at the 41st NYFF opening night

This year's closer is Bradley Cooper's Is This Thing On? with Will Arnett and Laura Dern, which looks like a less ambitious, if possibly more enjoyable film than Maestro, his misbegotten Leonard Bernstein biopic, though I quite liked his American take on A Star Is Born, more for Lady Gaga's warmhearted performance than anything else.

This year, I purchased tickets for four films in advance, a fairly arduous process, as it turns out, though I have no memory of the 2003 ticketing process. It took nearly two hours this time around to complete my order, in part because I lost my place in the queue and had to start all over again. By the time I got in, every other film I wanted to see was sold out online.

Members of Film Society at Lincoln Center surely have better luck online through pre-sales, but I don't live in New York, and nor can I afford to visit as often as I would like, so a membership wouldn't do me much good. 

Right: ticketholder line for the second screening of the Bruce Springsteen biopic--the Boss didn't show up for this one

Fortunately, NYFF holds tickets at the door for each screening, and I got to each one super-early, which meant a lot of standing around, but also a lot of fun people-watching–it's New York, after all–and the opportunity to chat with fellow filmgoers. The sellouts turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I left Seattle ridiculously early Sunday morning in order to get into NYC well before the 6:15pm screening of Kelly Reichardt's The Mastermind, but the plane was late, JFK was a mess, and my shuttle made a lot of stops on the way from Queens to Manhattan–yet no stops on the way back. 

By the time I checked into my Lower East Side Airbnb, the film had already begun. I'm glad I didn't waste money on a ticket I wouldn't have been able to use, not least since they start at $30 for new films and $20 for archival releases. Considering that Reichardt had to cancel her Seattle appearance with First Cow, due to Covid-19, I fear I'm forever fated to miss her.

Part 2: Ira Sachs' 1970s Reverie Peter Hujar's Day

More information about the 63rd NYFF at this link. Images from me (House of Dynamite screening and the line for Bruce Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere at Alice Tully Hall), Film Society at Lincoln Center (Distant and 21 Grams photocall), and Posterati (NYFF 41 poster signed by Junichi Taki).

Hans Christian Andersen Meets the Brothers Grimm in Lucile Hadžihalilović's The Ice Tower

THE ICE TOWER / La Tour de Glace 

(Lucile Hadžihalilović, France/Germany/Italy, 2025, 117 minutes)

 

How beautiful she was. So perfect! 

--A narrator describes The Snow Queen

Lucile Hadžihalilović's The Ice Tower, in which a fairy tale becomes real, opens with kaleidoscopic shapes, like icycles made from crystals or the shards of a mirror, dancing across an indigo sky to an enchanting ondes Martenot score (I assumed it was a theremin until I read otherwise). 

Even before a narrator (Saint Omer's Aurélia Petit) describes The Snow Queen's castle in voiceover, the French filmmaker, who wrote the screenplay with Geoff Cox (Evolution, Earwig), has conjured up a heightened atmosphere, something that could be said about all of her feature films to date, starting with 2004 Frank Wedekind adaptation Innocence. 

She then focuses on the rosy-cheeked face of Jeanne (22-year-old newcomer Clara Pacini), a dreamy, yet resourceful 15-year-old gazing at a snow-covered mountain in the Swiss Alps in 1970. There's no castle or tower in sight, but the image in her mind comes from the 19th-century book, Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, that she reads to her foster sister, Rose (Cassandre Louis Urbain), every night before bed. 

Jeanne is the oldest of several orphans all sharing the same overcrowded, if cozy-looking cottage. She's restless and unhappy, and the film has barely begun before she takes off, by walking, climbing and hitchhiking, to the nearest, not-so-close town. It's a somewhat treacherous journey, complete with potential predator, but she arrives intact and no worse for wear. 

Her journey ends, momentarily, at an open-air ice rink, where she's mesmerized by Bianca (Valentina Vezzoso), a long-limbed skater of great skill, but after everyone leaves, she's alone in the dark with no place to go.

From the way cinematographer Jonathan Ricquebourg (The Taste of Things) shoots this sequence, echoing Dario Argento's late-night dreamscapes, Jeanne could be Little Red Riding Hood wandering through a town rather than the woods, not least because she's wearing a red jacket. 

Jeanne finally finds a storage room in which to sleep, though she wakes to room-temperature snow floating through the air and the sight of the glittering, white-garbed Snow Queen (Marion Cotillard reuniting with the director 20 years after Innocence) through a peep hole, but what seems like a dream is real–the building houses a soundstage. Jeanne has seemingly manifested Andersen's tale. 

Before too long, she reveals herself to a crew member, who allows her to explore the backstage area. To another, she claims to be an extra, and finds herself in the film, but what sounds like pure wish fulfillment plays as sufficiently believable, though I wouldn't say that verisimilitude has ever been one of Hadžihalilović's top priorities. Notably, her partner, Gaspar Noé (wearing a hairpiece), plays the film-within-a-film's director, and I don't think it's completely coincidental that the maker of a film starring Argento, 2021's Vortex, actually resembles the Italian actor/director in this one.

As for Cotillard, she may not have been a star when she first worked with Hadžihalilović, but since then she's modeled for several French designers, graced the covers of numerous fashion magazines, starred in nearly two dozen English-language films and over 30 French ones, and won most every award, including an Oscar for 2007's La Vie en Rose. I've never heard that she's difficult, but she's as famous in real life as the fictional Cristina. 

Jeanne becomes intrigued by her ambiguous relationship with Max (German actor August Diehl, who appeared with Cotillard in Robert Zemeckis's 2016 spy thriller Allied). She watches Cristina watching herself in rushes, and imitates the way she smokes. Cristina catches her in the act, and asks what she finds so fascinating. Jeanne cites the Snow Queen's power and immortality. Cristina, however, sees the Queen as lonely, which may be how she sees herself–and how she sees Jeanne, too. 

Just as the opening sequence proves disorienting, I couldn't always tell when Jeanne was dreaming that she was exploring the grounds of the Ice Tower or just exploring a set. As the director confirmed to Indiewire's Ryan Lattanzio, "At some point, the idea of blurring the border between the dream and reality was the purpose of the film." Though Jeanne starts out as part of an ensemble, she ends up playing a unique character who looks like a younger version of the Queen with similar silvery makeup and platinum blonde hair. 

As they get to know each other, it isn't clear if Jeanne wants to be Cristina, finds her desirable, or sees her as a mother figure–Cotillard's oldest child is around the same age--but Cristina seems to see her younger self in Jeanne. All of these things can be true, and for a time, Cristina helps to make her threadbare life more comfortable, though it's clear there will be a cost. 

The cost, when it arrives, is both inappropriate and disturbing, and Jeanne takes it as a sign that it may be time to go. Along the way, Hadžihalilović reveals what happened to her mother, though I don't recall any mention of a father. Then again, fathers leave little impression in Hadžihalilović's work, if they appear at all (this takes extreme form in 2015 sci-fi oddity Evolution, in which women conceive without the aid of men).  

In the end, Cristina is a wolf in chic clothing, even if the director drew primarily from a different fairy tale. There's no woodsman, however, as in Kelsey Taylor's PNW-set To Kill a Wolf, a more grounded take on Little Red Riding Hood (if you missed the summer screenings, Taylor and cinematographer Adam Lee return to town this fall at SIFF Film Center).

Jeanne is on her own. If she sees herself in Cristina, and if Cristina--who also grew up in a foster home–sees herself in Jeanne, it isn't too late for one of them to start anew. Life, on the other hand, imitates art, since The Ice Tower is a smaller, more idiosyncratic film than those, like Michael Mann's Public Enemies or Christopher Nolan's Inception, with which Marion Cotillard has come to be associated during her post-Academy Award career.

Like Pacini, she's very good here, and the experienced actress and the ingenue work well together. Cotillard next appears, alongside Ornella Muti and Django legend Franco Nero, in an Italian adventure from another European master of the fantastique: Bertrand Mandico.

From Innocence through The Ice Tower, Lucile Hadžihalilović has placed women at the center of her work, especially young women trying to make sense of a world that does not always have their best interests at heart. It makes her films suspenseful and even a little scary, but these aren't horror movies; they're coming-of-age pictures made with great empathy and imagination, and this is surely one of the most beautiful she has made.

Headline note: French author Charles Perrault originated Little Red Riding Hood in 1697 before the German-born Brothers Grimm revived it in 1812. 

The Ice Tower opens in limited release on Fri, Oct 3. No Seattle dates yet, but I'll update this post once it becomes more readily available, whether by theatrical engagement, home-video release, or streaming platform. Images from Yellow Veil Pictures (Marion Cotillard and Clara Pacini in and out of character) and Penguin Random House (2000 edition of The Snow Queen).