#473 - Ira Sachs on Passages

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with director Ira Sachs, whose new film, Passages, is currently playing in our theaters. A masterful work of psychosexual intensity, the newest film from Ira Sachs offers one of the director’s most cutting variations on desire and intimacy. Co-written by author and longtime collaborator Mauricio Zacharias, Passages follows Tomas (Franz Rogowski), a mercurial German filmmaker living in Paris whose commitment to his husband, Martin (Ben Whishaw), falls short when he pursues a dalliance with a young schoolteacher, Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos). Martin begins his own affair soon after, while Tomas swings between both relationships and unleashes a reckless succession of breakups and makeups. With fearless performances from Rogowski, Whishaw, and Exarchopoulos, Sachs crafts a cinematic rarity in which the white-hot pleasures and compulsions of a particularly dysfunctional amour fou are kept on par with ferocious honesty. This conversation was moderated by film critic, Esther Zuckerman.