Nathan Silver Chooses A Poet Remake as His Next Feature Film

      When we spoke with Nathan Silver in December, he was quite clear about having his follow-up to Between the Temples—one of the top films of 2024—ready. Around that time, we had been hearing a lot (and giving plenty of praise) about Simón Mesa Soto’s Un Certain Regard winner A Poet, which has recently debuted in U.S. theaters through 1-2 Special. So, it seems we may have overlooked it: Deadline reports that Silver’s next film will be an English-language remake set in upstate New York, co-written with his frequent collaborator Chris “C. Mason” Wells and produced by Saïd Ben Saïd. Filming is expected to start this fall.

      A Poet's narrative indeed shares similarities with Silver and Wells’ previous project, as it centers on a depressed middle-aged man who finds comfort in mentoring a much younger female student, contrasting with the dynamic between Carol Kane and Jason Schwartzman in Temples. (The latter would likely be an ideal choice for the lead in this new project, especially given his resemblance to someone named Oscar.) Silver has openly discussed how his mother’s experience influenced Temples; staying true to the theme of writing what one knows, he remarked to Deadline that he “can relate all too well to a story of struggling to gain artistic recognition, financial stability, and discovering poetry in everyday life.” Meanwhile, Wells describes their Poet as offering an “American cover version — in a new language and sound but retaining the same infectious melody.”

      Even if both projects were entirely impersonal and distinctly different in narrative, one could still envision their creative sensibilities aligning with Soto’s. As we noted in our review last year, A Poet is the “kind of unscrupulous character study that may challenge the patience of anyone wondering why they should watch this sad sack sink deeper into his self-imposed misery, with certain segments suggesting slightly extended repetitions of prior events. Yet, as the Coens subjected Larry Gopnik to similar trials nearly a decade and a half ago, this provides another modern retelling of the Book of Job that finds an absurdly comic aspect to such suffering.”