Keep the Lights On

Keep the Lights On (2012) is Ira Sachs' intimate American drama, available to watch online on iFILM. New York, the late nineties. Erik, a Danish documentary filmmaker, answers a phone-line ad and meets Paul, a publishing lawyer still in the closet. A casual hookup quietly turns into nine years of life together.

Erik (Thure Lindhardt) wants closeness and a future. Paul (Zachary Booth) wants it too — but his addiction keeps stepping between them, disappearing and returning with him each time. The film follows the couple across the years: the moves, the breakups, the reconciliations, that specific exhaustion of loving someone you cannot fix.

Sachs drew on his own past here, and it shows in the restraint — long silences instead of big confrontations, no melodramatic push. The film earned warm notices at Sundance and Berlin. It's for viewers after an honest, grown-up relationship drama rather than a glossy love story. Stream Keep the Lights On (2012) online on iFILM.