Cannes 2026 | Rami Malek Gets Emotional As His AIDS Drama The Man I Love Earns 8-Minute Standing Ovation

Rami Malek-starrer gay drama The Man I Love received an overwhelming response in the Palais, earning an eight-minute standing ovation on Wednesday (May 20) at Cannes. Ira Sachs' drama ​is one of 22 films competing for the Palme d'Or at this year’s festival.

The Man I Love at Cannes

“This is a film about what we can bring to each other through art, through love, through pain, through memory,” said Sachs after the screening, per Variety. “And I hope there are some memories we share from this evening for the festival and our love of cinema”

Malek, 45, made his debut on the Cannes Film Festival red carpet on Wednesday. "To be a part of it here for the first time in my life and at this age is an extraordinary pinch yourself moment again," he told Reuters ahead of ​the premiere.

Post the film's screening, the crowd gave a standing ovation, lasting for 8 minutes, which made Malek emotional.

Watch the video here.

The Man I Love story

Set in the late 1980s in New York, Sachs co-wrote the script with Mauricio Zacharias. The film follows a theatre icon, Jimmy (Malek), who is battling AIDS.

The synopsis reads: “Faced with the death that awaits him, his thirst to live and create, to desire and to love one last time, is stronger than anything else.”

The Man I Love is described as a “musical fantasia of a city under duress.”

Alongside Malek, the film also stars Tom Sturridge, Rebecca Hall and Ebon Moss-Bachrach.

Sachs returned to competition at Cannes after his 2019 drama Frankie. The Man I Love marks Malek's first film at the Cannes competition.

He won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody (2018). The actor appeared in two films last year, Nuremberg and The Amateur. He also had a supporting role in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer (2023).