Like the subject of his Peter Hujar’s Day, Ira Sachs is an artist whose work is defined by intense intimacy, and with his latest, he turns a seemingly routine conversation into a warm, compassionate, entrancing story that locates the momentous in the mundane.

Built wholly around photographer Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw) recounting the events of his prior day to friend and writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall), the Passages writer/director’s 75-minute feature is quiet and contemplative, capturing a potent sense of its highly particular time and place, and speaking to grand issues of love, loss, art, purpose, memory, and the ephemerality of existence. It’s a film about the unremarkable that’s anything but.

Peter Hujar’s Day (November 7, in theaters) is based on Rosenkrantz’s book of the sa

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