Peter Hujar’s Day (dir. Ira Sachs)

by Jack Martin | Jan 4, 2026

Certificate: 12A

Running Time: 76 mins

UK Distributor: Picturehouse Entertainment

UK Release Date: 2 January 2026

WHO’S IN PETER HUJAR’S DAY?

Ben Whishaw, Rebecca Hall

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Ira Sachs (director, writer), Jonah Disend and Jordan Drake (producers), Alex Adhe (cinematographer), Affonso Gonçalves (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

In 1974, photographer Peter Hujar (Whishaw) confides in his artist friend Linda Rosenkrantz (Hall)…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON PETER HUJAR’S DAY?

Very little about Peter Hujar’s Day suggests anything remotely cinematic. The film, from writer-director Ira Sachs, is a line-by-line reenactment of a recorded conversation between photographer Peter Hujar and his writer friend Linda Rosenkrantz, where the former describes in vivid detail what he did the previous day… and that’s it. No stakes, no other major events, there’s not even any further insight into either of these real-life figures, leaving those going in knowing nothing about them coming out just as clueless, if not more so.

In most respects, a movie like this would be incredibly boring to sit through, a test of patience for audiences beyond the very niche one it’s clearly aimed towards. But there is still something worthwhile to take away from this movie, much of it coming from how good the actors are at making each line sound rich with complexity, as well as how the film itself is presented through Sachs’s observant eye for minute detail which, even for just a short while, makes this a rather riveting film to digest.

For context, the conversation between Hujar (played on-screen by Ben Whishaw) and Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall) was originally recorded in December 1974 at her apartment in New York City, for an unrealised writing project where Rosenkrantz would interview several of her artist friends about what they did the previous day. The result would have been an experiment to ground and even humanise those with exceptional creative talent in an era where the likes of Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe were making waves across the city’s bohemian art scene, but for whatever reason it never got off the ground, with the taped conversation and a typewritten transcript lying dormant for the next few decades. It wasn’t until they were donated to a New York museum displaying the works of Hujar, who died in 1987 after contracting AIDS, that their conversation finally became public, first in a book co-authored by Rosenkrantz and now in Sachs’s film adaptation which, true to form, sees Hujar tell Rosenkrantz everything he did over the last twenty-four hours, every single line of dialogue lifted directly from the transcript.

There’s very little within the actual description that warrants significant mention, for aside from preparing to photograph fellow artist Allen Ginsberg for a newspaper profile, it’s all very mundane and doesn’t suggest that many exciting things happen in his everyday life. But it is in how it’s conveyed that makes Peter Hujar’s Day fascinating to watch, because while it discards a traditional narrative in favour of a straightforward reenactment, the film keeps a steady visual momentum by altering the set-up every so often. They’ll be chatting on the sofa one moment, then they’ll be at a dining table eating some lunch the next, before briefly moving outside onto the balcony overlooking the city skyline and then lying next to each other on a bed, all while the actors utter the exact words their respective real-life figures were documented as saying. Sometimes, the film will take brief intervals as they dance to music or pose like they’re in some of Hujar’s artsier pictures, and on one or two occasions there’s even a meta flavour as we briefly see the crew setting up shots as Sachs directs off-camera.

It’s an interesting flow that the filmmaker has opted for here, one that seems to be part-docudrama mixed with arthouse tendencies which creates a peculiar vibe where you’re drawn into its style more than the actual substance. Although, there’s an argument to be made in this case that the style is the substance, because the whole point of this movie is to recreate a recollection of what even Peter Hujar himself at one point admits is a rather uninteresting series of events, and if it were just a straightforward reading of the transcript, then it really would be Gerry levels of feature-length boredom. The reason that it isn’t, however, doesn’t just lie in the filmmaking, particularly with Alex Adhe’s grainy 16mm cinematography warming the screen every opportunity it gets, but also in how great Whishaw and Hall are in this film. These are far from showy performances, with their deliveries about as understated as the real-life people they’re portraying, but there’s a real magnetism beneath each of their inflictions and slight pauses as they ponder on certain details, with Whishaw especially living and breathing Peter Hujar in a turn where you sense so much more to this person, even if the transcribed film doesn’t allow us to dive deeper into who he was as a person.

Because of that, as well as its very niche appeal, it’s easy to imagine a lot of people not getting on too well with this movie. This is something that perhaps plays far better to those who are more familiar with the 70s New York art scene than the average viewer, with the film referencing other artists and high-profile figures as though the audience already knows exactly who they’re talking about, which can make it feel somewhat alienating as our two leads rarely stop, if at all, to fill in certain gaps for the sake of clarity. It definitely has the capacity to make someone who’s very much not of that audience feel rather bored, and honestly there were a few times when even I was starting to feel my mind drifting a little bit, since like most people I am not as literate in this era of bohemian art and am thus less likely to resonate with it as much as those who are.

But whether or not you belong to its very narrow target audience, Peter Hujar’s Day is an interesting experiment that doesn’t entirely hold water but has just enough capacity to impress as a slickly crafted and well-performed chamber piece, one that narrowly defies its uncinematic tendencies with an artistic stroke of intrigue.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Peter Hujar’s Day is a slick recreation of a transcribed conversation that defies its uncinematic tendencies with interesting filmmaking choices and two exceptional lead turns, even though it’s bound to predominantly appeal toward a very niche audience rather than general viewers.