By Rebecca Ford

Now streaming globally on Netflix, The Singers is an Oscar-nominated, genre-bending short from two-time Academy Award® nominee Sam A. Davis. Inspired by a nineteenth-century story from Ivan Turgenev, the film reimagines classic literature as a contemporary meditation on connection, artistry and the overlooked voices hiding in plain sight.

Set inside a down-at-heel pub filled with downtrodden men, The Singers unfolds around an impromptu sing-off that gradually dissolves emotional barriers. Blending documentary authenticity with narrative craft, the film has amassed 35 awards across more than 50 festival appearances, culminating in an Academy Award® nomination.

For Davis, the project began with a moment of digital serendipity.

“After finishing the story, I happened to see a viral video of a subway busker in New York,” he explains. “It was a raw, beautiful performance by Mike Young, and I immediately envisioned a modern riff on Turgenev’s story, but starring viral singers and buskers we’d discover online, geniuses hiding in plain sight.”

That instinct shaped the casting process. Over a year and a half, Davis scoured TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, reaching out directly to performers who had never acted before. The ensemble ultimately included subway sensation Mike Young, folk-blues mainstay Chris Smither, The Voice Australia winner Judah Kelly and viral creators Llanteros 503.

“We weren’t just looking for great voices,” Davis says. “We wanted depth and soul. We specifically avoided aspiring actors. We wanted humble people who had never considered being in a film.”

The gamble was real. Without traditional auditions, Davis admits, “We didn’t truly know how they’d perform on camera until we were on set, and we embraced that risk.”

The result is a film that lives between forms. “The idea of a group of men bonding in a bar feels like a fable,” Davis says. “I was curious what would happen if we grounded that in reality and told the story with real people playing themselves, improvising dialogue. That gave the film a unique space, both storybook-like and documentary in its texture.”

Though shot in a Moose Lodge in California, the setting feels timeless and universal. Davis and his team stripped away modern distractions and regional markers to create something archetypal. “The goal was something detailed and textured, yet archetypal, like a fable.”

Improvisation became the engine of the narrative. During an early fitting, one performer began playfully heckling the others, a spontaneous act that reshaped the film. “That energy became central to the film and led to the sing-off structure,” Davis recalls. “We built the narrative around discoveries like that.”

The production method reinforced that spontaneity. Davis directed, shot and edited the film himself, a workflow rooted in his documentary background. “I don’t think of those roles as separate,” he says. “Just filmmaking.”

To preserve immediacy, sound rolled continuously, even when the camera did not. “Because we shot on film, we only rolled occasionally, they never knew exactly when we were filming,” Davis explains. “Visually, we kept the camera restrained and classical, which allowed freedom within the frame for improvisation.”

Music, in turn, functions as emotional dialogue. Davis encouraged performers to move beyond lyrics and infuse songs with personal meaning. In one especially moving moment, a cast member dedicated his performance to his late wife. “That made the moment profoundly real,” Davis says.

Despite its hybrid nature, The Singers was positioned strategically as a narrative short. “We presented it as a narrative short with documentary sensibilities,” Davis notes. Momentum built gradually across the festival circuit, with a key Oscar-qualifying Grand Jury Prize accelerating its awards trajectory.

Now, with its release on Netflix, the film reaches a global audience, a milestone Davis describes as transformative. “For short filmmakers, exposure is the return on investment. An Oscar nomination and Netflix release are best-case scenarios.”

At its core, The Singers is a love letter to underdogs, a celebration of resilience and artistic reinvention discovered through algorithms but revealed through human connection. “Audiences have always loved underdogs,” Davis reflects. “What feels current is that we used social media to find them, then made something deeply human and handmade. It’s a healthy use of technology.”

The emotional openness that defines the film was cultivated carefully on set. “It began with building trust over time,” Davis says. “Because the cast weren’t career actors, the stakes felt lower. It was a life experience for them, not a make-or-break moment.”

Audience reactions have reshaped his own creative philosophy. “Earlier in my career, I was wary of being earnest,” he admits. “But there’s something powerful about making something ambitious that also makes people feel good.”

In the end, Davis insists there was no calculated balance between art and awards. “We took risks without thinking about commercial viability,” he says. “It’s gratifying that something unconventional resonated with both Netflix and the Academy.”

From a 19th-century Russian short story to a modest pub filled with overlooked men, The Singers argues that vulnerability is an act of courage, and that extraordinary beauty can emerge from the most ordinary rooms.