This week, Rami Malek made his Cannes Film Festival debut, stepping onto the famous Croisette red carpet for the premiere of Ira Sachs’ The Man I Love, a bruised and beautiful new drama in which Malek plays Jimmy, an HIV-positive theatre artist trying to carve out a life – and hold onto love – in the emotional fallout of 1980s New York. “It’s an intimate film set within a community of artists trying to create beauty, meaning, and connection during an incredibly fragile moment in time,” the US actor tells us from Cannes. “What I loved about it is that it never treats these people as symbols – they’re messy, sensual, funny, ambitious, frightened, deeply alive.”

That refusal to flatten queer lives into tragedy is what gives The Man I Love its emotional charge. Sachs frames the city as both bruised and electric: moving through rehearsal rooms, bars, bedsits and backstage corridors with the energy of the time, capturing a generation living beneath the shadow of the AIDS crisis while stubbornly refusing to stop creating, desiring, performing, loving. The result is a film that feels deeply human and emotionally raw.

For the premiere, Malek wore custom Zegna, selected for him by artistic director Alessandro Sartori: a black wool-and-silk peak-lapel dinner jacket, white silk smoking shirt, black straight-leg trousers, silk bow tie and polished Torino boots. “Alessandro Sartori designed something incredibly elegant and considered for this premiere,” Malek explains. “There’s something incredibly poetic about wearing something shaped by generations of artistry, precision, and tailoring tradition.”

Speaking to us from Cannes, Malek reflects on inhabiting Jimmy’s world, collaborating with Zegna, and why Cannes remains one of cinema’s great communal spaces.

Alex James Taylor: Hey Rami, this is your Cannes debut – congrats – what has your experience been, and why do you think the film festival remains so important to the industry?
Rami Malek: Cannes still feels like one of the last places where cinema is treated not simply as content, but as culture — as something alive, urgent, and worth gathering around for. There’s a seriousness and passion to the way films are watched here that’s incredibly rare. For me personally, some of the most meaningful artistic conversations I’ve ever had have happened in Cannes — after screenings, late at night, with filmmakers, journalists, and audiences from all over the world responding to the same piece of work in completely different ways. It reminds you cinema is still a global language.

“There’s something very moving about someone using art almost as a way to stay ahead of disappearance – to leave behind proof that they were here, that they loved, that they mattered.”

AJT: Can you tell us about The Man I Love, and take us through your character in the story?
RM: It’s an intimate film set within a community of artists trying to create beauty, meaning, and connection during an incredibly fragile moment in time. What I loved about it is that it never treats these people as symbols – they’re messy, sensual, funny, ambitious, frightened, deeply alive. I play Jimmy, an artist and performer who’s constantly trying to reinvent himself through creation. There’s something very moving about someone using art almost as a way to stay ahead of disappearance – to leave behind proof that they were here, that they loved, that they mattered. Ira Sachs captured that world with tremendous compassion and humanity. The film feels like a quiet act of defiance – artists insisting on beauty and connection in the face of uncertainty.

“Some of the most meaningful artistic conversations I’ve ever had have happened in Cannes — after screenings, late at night, with filmmakers, journalists, and audiences from all over the world.”

AJT: Take us through your Zegna look for the Film Festival – what are your favourite details?
RM: Alessandro Sartori designed something incredibly elegant and considered for this premiere. We landed on a longer single-breasted tuxedo jacket with a more structured shoulder and a stronger lapel to create a sharper silhouette, but the overall feel remains fluid and effortless. The trousers are high-waisted with pleats and a straighter leg — not overly slim — which gives the look a timeless ease, especially paired with boots.

My favourite detail may actually be the shirt: this beautiful off-white silk crafted in Trivero, in the Biella region of northern Italy, a place so deeply tied to textile history and craftsmanship. The pure mountain water there has long been part of what makes the silk feel so luxuriously soft. There’s something incredibly poetic about wearing something shaped by generations of artistry, precision, and tailoring tradition.

Photography by Thomas Chene