Ira Sachs is an intelligent, cine-literate director born in Memphis, Tennessee, later based in New York. His subtle, smart dramas echo his experiences of living in these two places, as well as drawing wider from his collaborators and influences.

He directed several shorts in the early 1990s, before making his feature debut with 16mm shot, Memphis set The Delta, about a closeted young gay man struggling with his identity. It took him nine years to finance his next feature, Forty Shades of Blue, which premiered to considerable acclaim and won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance. Also set in Memphis, the film explores a relationship between an ageing American musician and a young Russian woman. Ira’s next film, Married Life, was a larger scale affair and something of an anomaly amongst his filmography. Starring Rachel McAdams, Chris Cooper and Patricia Clarkson, it’s a 1940s-set drama in which a unfaithful man plans to murder his wife instead of putting her through the humiliation of a divorce.

Ira’s most recent three films, a New York trilogy of deceptively small scale urban dramas, were all made with writing partner Mauricio Zacharias. The first, semi-autobiographical gay relationship drama Keep The Lights On, proved a major festival and audience hit in 2012, for good reason. His next film, the charming Love Is Strange follows a same-sex couple (John Lithgow and Alfred Molina) who experience the encroachment of gentrification first hand after their living situation no longer becomes tenable after a job loss. A sprawling gentle portrait of the city and its inhabitants, the film leads naturally into Ira’s latest and best film Little Men, an intimate Brooklyn set drama in which two young boy’s burgeoning friendship is interrupted by a rent dispute between their respective parents. In all of these films, Ira tells small stories with a universality of emotional impact despite the specificity of the locations and situations depicted.

Next up, Ira is working on a Montgomery Clift biopic for HBO. He’s also involved with QUEER | ART, a New York based non-profit that supports LGBT artists in the city. He recently married artist Boris Torres, and together with neighbour (and director of Cameraperson, Kristen Johnson) they have two children.

Ira Sachs is our judge for October Film of the Month. Please submit your shorts to him by October 14th. The three films with the most votes from a shortlist of twelve will be sent to Ira for his esteemed feedback. Winners also receive free membership to Vimeo+.

His latest film Little Men is out around the world now, and available on VOD/home media soon.