Ben Whishaw gay drama with 96% Rotten Tomatoes rating gets first trailer
Ben Whishaw as Peter Hujar in Peter Hujar’s Day (Janus Films)
Ben Whishaw as Peter Hujar in Peter Hujar's Day (Janus Films)
Ben Whishaw is captivating in the first trailer for Peter Hujar’s Day, in which the Paddington star plays the titular gay photographer.
Alongside Rebecca Hall, who plays writer Linda Rosenkrantz, the trailer sees Whishaw in a cinematic version of a recorded conversation between the two that took place in 1974. Rosenkrantz then produced the book Peter Hujar’s Day.
The trailer sees the pair discuss a 24-hour period in Hujar’s life and is set entirely in Rosenkrantz’s flat. “The film freely and imaginatively recreates that long-ago afternoon and the wonderfully discursive exchange between these two singular individuals,” the synopsis reads.
“As the photographer vividly describes interactions with leading cultural figures of the day, including Allen Ginsberg and Susan Sontag, as well the challenges of living on limited financial resources in 70s New York, Peter Hujar’s Day transforms unexpectedly into a Bloomsday-like rumination on both an artist’s life and time itself.”
The film first debuted at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival in January. It’s now set for a cinematic release in the United States on 7 November. A wider release has not been announced at the time of writing.
In its review Variety praised Whishaw’s “sweet, morose, gay, chain-smoking, furtively sincere, faraway-eyed Hujar.” It also spoke of the film as being “exquisitely done and arresting to watch.” The film currently enjoys a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from critics.
Directed by Ira Sachs, who worked with Whishaw on Passages, the film spotlights an important figure from New York’s cultural scene in the 1970s and 80s. As well as photographing the likes of Ginsberg, Hujar photographed a variety of subjects including male nudes. Inspired by George Platt Lynes’s work, Hujar was a contemporary of Robert Mapplethorpe.
Hujar is also known for his photography around the gay liberation movement and the Stonewall riots in 1969. He also took the iconic ‘Come Out!’ image that was used by the Gay Liberation Front.
Hujar died in 1987 after being diagnosed with AIDs.
