A Poet U.S. Remake: Nathan Silver and Saïd Ben Saïd Bring Cannes Winner to Upstate New York
A Cannes 2025 Un Certain Regard Jury Prize winner is heading for an English-language remake, with producer Saïd Ben Saïd and director Nathan Silver adapting Colombian filmmaker Simon Mesa Soto's absurdist dramedy for American audiences. Filming is expected later in fall 2026, set in upstate New York, with SBS Productions behind the project.
What Nathan Silver Actually Said — and Why It Matters
"I could immediately picture an American version of the film, transposing this character's plight to a land that cares even less for poetry than Colombia." That line, from director Nathan Silver in an exclusive statement reported by Deadline, is funnier and sadder than most loglines you'll read this Cannes market season. It's also the clearest possible articulation of why this particular remake might actually work — not despite the cultural gap, but because of it.
The project pairs Silver with Tunisian-French producer Saïd Ben Saïd, whose SBS Productions has quietly assembled one of the most distinctive slates in contemporary art-house cinema. Together, they're betting that the bruised, quixotic spirit of A Poet — Simon Mesa Soto's portrait of a middle-aged poet whose life lurches sideways when he begins mentoring a teenage girl's creative talent — translates naturally to the particular American flavor of artistic disappointment. Upstate New York as a setting isn't just geography. It's a mood.
The Verified Details: Who, What, When, and Where
Here's what Deadline confirmed as of May 11, 2026, when the announcement broke during the Cannes market:
- The original film: A Poet (Una Poeta), directed by Colombian filmmaker Simon Mesa Soto, won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes 2025
- Director of the remake: Nathan Silver (Between the Temples, Sundance 2024)
- Producer: Saïd Ben Saïd, via SBS Productions
- Screenplay: Co-written by Nathan Silver and Chris Mason Wells — the same writing duo behind Between the Temples
- Setting: Upstate New York (English-language)
- Filming window: Targeted for fall 2026
- Sales: SBS International handling worldwide; market discussions kicked off at Cannes 2026
- Casting: Still in progress as of the announcement date
The speed of this is notable. Mesa Soto's film only took the Jury Prize at Cannes 2025, and Ben Saïd has already acquired remake rights and attached a director and writing team barely twelve months later. That's not accidental — Ben Saïd was present at Cannes 2025 when A Poet made its mark, and he's the kind of producer who moves on instinct honed over decades.
No runtime or budget figures have been disclosed at this stage. Hard to say if casting announcements will arrive before or after filming begins — the Deadline report simply notes that "casting is in process."
Why This Remake Arrives at a Specific Moment for Art-House Cinema
The thing nobody mentions in the flurry of remake announcements is how rarely the art-house circuit produces remakes at all. Hollywood hoovers up genre IP constantly, but a Cannes Un Certain Regard Jury Prize winner becoming the basis for a U.S. production within a year of its premiere? That's genuinely unusual.
What's striking is the timing relative to the independent film market's current anxiety. The traditional Sundance-to-acquisition pipeline has grown choppier since 2023, with specialty distributors tightening acquisition budgets and streamers becoming more selective about art-house acquisitions. Against that backdrop, Ben Saïd's model — producing prestige films with European financing structures and then leveraging remake rights as a secondary revenue and creative stream — looks increasingly prescient.
Between the Temples, Silver's 2024 Sundance title starring Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane, offers a useful comparison point for what this remake might feel like tonally. Sony Pictures Classics picked that film up, and it earned strong reviews for its particular blend of comic melancholy — a grieving music teacher reconnects with his childhood Hebrew school teacher as an adult bat mitzvah student. Absurdist, emotionally precise, genuinely strange. That's essentially the register A Poet operates in, and Silver is already fluent in it.
For readers using Movie OTT to track where art-house titles land across streaming platforms, Between the Temples is currently available in several regions and serves as the clearest preview of what Silver will bring to this project.
Silver and Wells on Making an "American Cover Version"
The creative framing Silver and co-writer Chris Mason Wells have chosen is worth sitting with. Wells told Deadline: "Our idea is to make something new that would still retain the furiously funny, upsetting, and moving spirit of the original. A kind of American cover version — in a new language and sound but with the same infectious melody."
Cover version. That's a smart and honest way to frame an adaptation, and it's more candid than most remake announcements manage. It acknowledges the debt without pretending the new film will simply be a translation. The best cover versions — think Johnny Cash's "Hurt," or Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" — find something in the original that the original artist couldn't quite reach, or couldn't reach from that particular cultural angle.
Silver's own statement about his teenage obsession with Rimbaud and Nerval, traveling to France at 16 and finding "a bunch of teenagers who mostly cared about getting stoned and making out," is funnier than any pitch document. It's also the kind of biographical detail that suggests he's not approaching this as a mercenary assignment. He has a personal stake in the gap between poetic idealism and lived reality.
Where to Watch A Poet Right Now — and What Indian Audiences Should Know
For Indian audiences, A Poet is the kind of film that typically arrives through festival circuit buzz before landing on a streaming platform — often Netflix or MUBI, which has become the primary destination for Un Certain Regard titles in the Indian market. As of this writing, confirmed streaming availability for A Poet in India has not been officially announced, but based on patterns with similar Cannes winners, here's what to watch for:
- MUBI India: The most likely first-window platform for A Poet, given MUBI's consistent acquisition of Un Certain Regard titles
- Netflix India: Possible, depending on territorial rights negotiations; Netflix has been acquiring more festival-circuit Latin American and European titles since 2024
- Prime Video India: Less likely for this category of film, but not impossible
- SonyLIV / Zee5: Unlikely for a Colombian art-house title of this profile
The U.S. remake, once completed, will follow a separate distribution path — and that version is more likely to land on a major streamer with Indian availability, given Ben Saïd's relationships with international distributors. Movie OTT's where-to-watch tracker is the fastest way to check current streaming availability for both the original and the remake across Indian platforms as rights deals are confirmed.
For context: Colombian cinema has a small but devoted following among Indian art-house viewers, particularly after Monos (2019) built awareness of the country's festival-circuit output. A Poet operates in a different register — quieter, more comedic — but that audience exists and will find this film.
Saïd Ben Saïd: The Producer Behind the Project
Born in 1966, Saïd Ben Saïd founded SBS Productions in 2010 and has since built a filmography that reads like a curated art-house festival retrospective. Key credits:
- Elle (2016) — Paul Verhoeven's controversial thriller starring Isabelle Huppert, which earned Huppert a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination
- Passages (2023) — Ira Sachs' frank drama starring Franz Rogowski and Ben Whishaw
- The Shrouds (2024) — David Cronenberg's return to body-horror territory
- Last Summer (2023) — Catherine Breillat's provocative drama
- Between the Temples (2024) — Nathan Silver's Sundance comedy, the direct predecessor to this remake project
- The Man I Love (2026) — Ira Sachs' Cannes Competition drama starring Rami Malek, which Ben Saïd brought to the 2026 festival alongside Diary of a Chambermaid by Radu Jude
His most recent non-Cannes credit is Maigret et le mort amoureux, released February 18, 2026. You can find his full producing history via his AlloCiné profile.
The pattern across his slate is consistent: directors with a strong personal vision, material that takes social and emotional risk, and a willingness to work outside the comfort zone of mainstream commercial cinema. A Poet fits that template precisely.
Nathan Silver, for his part, is a New York-based filmmaker whose work has always occupied the space between mumblecore intimacy and broader comic observation. Between the Temples was his breakout — Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane are genuinely remarkable in it, and Sony Classics' acquisition confirmed Silver's arrival as a filmmaker with real commercial art-house appeal.
Movie OTT has tracking pages for Ben Saïd's produced titles across streaming regions, useful for readers who want to build a complete picture of what this creative partnership has already delivered.
What Happens Next: Casting, Fall Filming, and the Road to Distribution
The remake of A Poet is now officially in active development, with Cannes 2026 serving as the launchpad for sales discussions. SBS International is handling worldwide rights, which means deal flow over the next several months will determine which distributors — and ultimately which streaming platforms — end up with the finished film.
Casting remains the biggest open variable. Given Silver's track record with Between the Temples, expect character actors with strong comic-dramatic range rather than marquee names. The lead role — a struggling middle-aged poet — is the kind of part that attracts serious performers who don't get enough of this material.
Fall 2026 filming in upstate New York means a likely 2027 festival run, probably Sundance or Berlin, followed by theatrical and streaming release. For the latest confirmed streaming availability across all regions as deals are announced, Movie OTT will have the current picture as it develops.
The original A Poet is worth seeking out before the remake arrives. Not to compare — but because Mesa Soto's film earned that Jury Prize, and the best remakes start with audiences who already know what's being covered.
