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Exclusive: Josh Close (Killers of the Flower Moon) has signed on to star in American Solitaire, an indie drama marking the first feature from writer-director Aaron Davidman.

He stars in the film as a U.S. soldier struggling to make sense of civilian life when he is confronted with the complexities of gun violence in America. Pic’s producers are Davidman, Lisa Bruce, David Oyelowo and Dylan Kussman (Wrestling Jerusalem). Marcus Gardley is serving as consulting producer.

Most recently, Close was seen playing Horace Burkhart, the brother of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Osage murderer Ernest, in Martin Scorsese’s Academy Award-nominated epic Killers of the Flower Moon. Prior to that, he starred opposite Trace Lysette and Patricia Clarkson in the acclaimed drama Monica, which was released by IFC Films after world premiering in Venice.

The first words in Wrestling Jerusalem are “It’s complicated,” and Aaron Davidman doesn’t pretend to simplify the subject with his first-person look at politics, animosities and hope in the Middle East. But in translating the one-man show to the screen, actor-turned-director Dylan Kussman has unnecessarily complicated the material, overcompensating for its stage-bound nature with busy crosscutting between a San Francisco theater and the Mojave Desert (subbing for the Negev).

Channeling the perspectives of 17 characters based on people he interviewed (some are invented), Davidman has an unmistakable talent for inhabiting personalities, male and female, across a range of ethnicities, ages...