Credit: Netflix

The award season anticipation has officially reached a fever pitch, and Netflix is capitalising on the buzz with an Oscar-nominated short film premiering this February, The Singers.

Based on the 1850 Ivan Turgenev story of the same name, Sam Davis’s upcoming short film transforms a timeless literary work into a contemporary American barroom story. Davis, who produced, filmed, and edited the Oscar-winning short film, Period. End of Sentence., came across Turgenev’s story as part of George Saunders’s A Swim in a Pond in the Rain.

But it was when he stumbled upon a viral video of New York City subway busker Mike Young singing Righteous Brothers’ ‘Unchained Melody,’ to a crowd that the idea for the film dawned upon him.

“That was the kismet moment in which a nearly 200-year-old short story and a viral video collided into one crystal clear vision: a modern take on The Singers, featuring an oddball cast of unknown or underappreciated talents discovered on social media – geniuses in the rough, hiding in plain sight in a lowly dive,” Davis says.

The Academy Award-nominated short film relies on a flock of unsung talent, which Davis specifically chose, spending over a year combing social media for The Singers. Young makes his acting debut in the short film. In addition to that, Davis roped in Australia’s The Voice winner Judah Kelly, New Orleans French Quarter busker and pianist Will Harrington, Oklahoma-based operatic tenor and voice coach Matthew Corcoran and folk blues singer Chris Smith.

Davis and casting director Natalie Lin also cast prolific non-singing bar regulars, including Afghanistan war veteran Daniel “Hutch Hitchinson, Arkansas townie David Scott, Salvadoran tire-shop dancers Tio Rigo and Mr George, alongside a horde of local street cast from dive bars in greater LA.

“For the next four days we hunkered down with a small team, a 35mm film camera, and an outline based on a 175-year-old text, clumsily improvising, sculpting, drawing from real lived experience and forming a little oddball family,” Davis reflected. However, “like the cigarette smoke that filled the room, there was an undeniable magic in the air, a shared feeling that we were up to something special.”

Besides earning a nod at the Academy Awards for ‘Best Live Action Short Film’ on January 22nd, The Singers has already bagged 35 awards across 50 film festivals in 2025.

So, if that makes you curious, don’t forget to tune into The Singers, premiering on Netflix on February 13th.