Nathan Silver’s Movie, “Between the Temples,” Shows at Tribeca

Early on in Nathan Silver’s “Between the Temples,” Ben Gottlieb, a 40-ish widower played by Jason Schwartzman, walks into a bar in his tallit and skullcap with the intention of getting plastered.

Ben, a synagogue cantor in upstate New York who has lost the ability to praise the Lord through song since his wife died a year earlier, gets sloshed on mudslides, punched in the face and attracts the notice of another patron, Carla Kessler, a feisty septuagenarian played by Carol Kane. It is, as they say, the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Before long, Ben is giving Carla adult bat mitzvah lessons.

“Between the Temples,” showing at the Tribeca Festival, which runs Wednesday through June 16, is Silver’s ninth feature film. It first screened in January at the Sundance Film Festival, followed by its international premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in February. The film has already won praise for Silver’s direction and its performances. When the movie is released in U.S. theaters on Aug. 23, it may finally bring Silver and his kinetic, fiercely intelligent films wider recognition.

Silver’s career is one of the most singular in contemporary independent American filmmaking. Over the past 15 years, Silver, 41, has emerged as a chronicler of the uncomfortably intimate and as an auteur who is unafraid of emotional and narrative complexity. He directed his first feature film at 25. From 2012 to 2018, he worked at a frantic pace that recalled the relentless productivity of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who made over 40 films before his death at 37. Not surprisingly, the German filmmaker is one of Silver’s cinematic idols.

The raw spontaneous energy and naturalism of Silver’s films result from close collaboration with his artistic team, including his writers and actors.