As any Seinfeld fan will know, a New York City apartment is the perfect place for nothing to happen. And nothing always means something.

In December 1974, writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall) invites her photographer friend Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw) over to her apartment on 94th Street to record his recollections of the day before. But while Hujar's pinpoint remembrances and reflections capture the minutiae of the day as morning turns to night and the sun sets over the Hudson, the chat never made it to print in the way Rosenkrantz intended.

Peter Hujar's Day is a reconstruction of that conversation because, as the preamble tells us, while the original tapes were lost, the discovery of a transcript in Hujar's papers long after his death prompted Rosenkrantz to publish the 2021 book that inspired this film. The essence of both is very much Hujar picking over his day (are two naps too many?) and, in particular, a session photographing committed ‘chanter' Allen Ginsberg, through morning tea, daytime scotch and dinnertime milk. That and a lot of cigarettes (“I have smoker's hangover all day”).

What adapter and director Ira Sachs successfully uncovers is that two days, not one, comprise Peter Hujar's Day. There's one that the American photographer describes at length. Then there's the following day spent relating it to Rosencrantz. In a meticulously detailed film, there's plenty of room for us to decide which is more insightful.

Peter Hujar's Day is a two-hander. Barring the minor and rather strange intrusion of a film crew, the screen is held by Whishaw and Hall—two of the best British actors of their generation playing the two New York icons. Any quibbles about them wrapping vowels around the subjects' Trenton and Bronx accents vanish immediately. Sachs wields a light camera over a tight canvas—it was filmed in Rosenkrantz's original apartment— capturing late 1974 with such deliberation that it easily sweeps you away in the actors' company.

Peter Hujar's Day is stagey, yes. It's mainly dialogue, or rather, a stream of consciousness following a rough chronology, with surreality and in-jokes balancing either end. But it's not as fixed as it sounds. Early shots lock in square frames until the camera turns to retrain on its subject. When the pair moves location, it doesn't feel like forced variety. The lens can be an obtrusive and selective voyeur (at one point it loses focus on Rosenkrantz before floating right to find Hujar on the near plane), but it's always wholly empathetic to its material. The tape, on the other hand, the invited eavesdropper, loses significance as the locales change. The dialogue runs over jump cuts in some deceptively deft work by editor Affonso Gonçalves. And sparingly, Sachs removes the interviewer and interviewee from the day. Emulating the shadow and light of Hujar's work, both interviewer and subject are caught in rare posed moments.

Elsewhere, the grain pops and the grading glows with the mid-1970s. Cinematographer Alex Ashe ensures cigarette smoke wisps are beautifully captured inside, and Manhattan's skyline is a stunning pastel parade outside. When the evening arrives, it provides both backlights and spotlights.

Hujar offers no great insights; he has preoccupations and worries, but major revelations aren't on the cards in this snapshot. There's no need for Peter Hujar's Day to end with a plate detailing what happened to its subjects, as all elements combine to provide an insight into Hujar's character at that time. As the photographer's state of mind becomes clearer, the camera becomes looser, but the journey of Hall's Rosenkrantz is the one to watch. She's rarely more than a foil—the one time she oversteps Hujar snaps, “You're assuming what we don't know.” But by the end, she's quieter, reflective, and could that be the future intruding in the welling of the final shots? Perhaps we have the reason the tapes didn't realise their purpose for decades.

A marked change from 2023's Passages, but alive with the same deep humanity (and not uncoincidentally the brilliant Whishaw), Peter Hujar's Day isn't a more commercial move by Sachs. But it is a masterclass in filming a day in the life, and an engrossing, rewarding 80 minutes of cinema.

Peter Hujar's Day received its UK premiere as part of the Create strand at the 2025 London Film Festival 2025 on 10 October.