A Poet

Oscar Restrepo (newcomer Ubeimar Rios) is middle-aged, unemployed, an alcoholic living with his mother (Margarita Soto) who he's constantly hitting up for money when he's not being threatened with being thrown out of her Medellín apartment by his sister Yolanda's (Adriana Upegui) husband. Oscar still clings to the idea that since he won a prize and published two slim books in his early twenties, that he is "A Poet."

Laura's Review: B+

Writer/director Simón Mesa Soto's pitch black comedy was both the winner of Cannes' 2025 Un Certain Regard Jury Prize and Columbia's submission for the 2026 International Oscar. While he had initially intended to cast a professional actor as his lead, it turned out that the uncle of a friend of his was the perfect person to embody Oscar, a slump shouldered, slack-jawed shuffler adorned with dandruff who somehow turns him into an anti-hero, a loser one finds oneself rooting for. Oscar is the epitome of the saying 'no good deed goes unpunished' and with everything going against him we cannot help but want him to succeed.

Oscar idolizes unheralded Columbian poet José Asunción Silva, drunkenly extolling his virtues to a street friend whose mention of Gabriel García Márquez he excoriates, declaring Márquez an attention seeker. Oscar wakes up on the sidewalk, a not uncommon occurrence. Having established his main character, Soto titles the first of his four chapters, beginning with what we've just witnessed, 'Failure.'

Yolanda insists he needs to get a job and she can connect him with a teaching position, an idea which he disdains but is forced to consider, especially since he has offered to help with his daughter Daniela's (Alisson Correa) college tuition. Spiking his Thermos with booze before entering the school, a clearly intoxicated Oscar rants to his class about poetry, at first drawing stares, then laughter. Then a boy in the class points out
Yurlady (Rebeca Andrade) as someone who writes poetry. Oscar takes an interest and, impressed by what he sees in her notebook, asks 'Do you also live in profound sadness?' 'No,' the teen replies simply, but Oscar is undeterred, believing he has found a like-minded soul to mentor. Excited, he goes to see Alonso (Humberto Restrepo) and Efrain (Guillermo Cardona), the co-directors of a prestigious poetry school, asking if they can give her a scholarship. Again he is told no as their funding is inadequate. They do, however, award a cash prize for the school's poetry winner, providing she enroll. Oscar also tries to get them to promote his decades-old books, but when they manage to get him a television interview, he goes off the rails when he realizes he is on an a.m. 'chat show.'

Oscar will spend his time alternately trying to forge a relationship with the daughter who is embarrassed by him while Yurlady fills the bill as a substitute to nurture. As fifteen year-old Yurlady lives with three siblings aged sixteen to twenty-two who all have children of their own, her grandmother the adult guardian as her mother, who works as a maid, is only home on Sundays, Oscar finds himself beginning to support them with food when he's not being hustled by Yurlady's Uncle Edison. But when Oscar gets Yurlady to read one of her poems at the poetry school, applause bursts out, Efrain declares her Oscar's 'magnum opus' and he and Alonso build their poetry festival advertising campaign around her. There's only one catch - Efrain wants her to write a poem with 'social significance' for their festival, maybe one reflecting on the color of her skin...

Soto juggles many tones here and does so expertly, getting laughs from cutting to Oscar driving immediately after his mother tells him not to take her car, heart tugs with Daniela's rejections of her dad and horror at what actually happens during the poetry festival and its aftermath. And while we can see Yurlady is more interested in painting her nails than writing poems, Oscar's desire to help her is sincere and the two actually do forge a bond, one which sees Yurlady as his unlikely savior in ways practical and profound.

Cinematographer Juan Sarmiento G.'s 16 mm lensing gives the film a weathered, 70's docudrama look while a jazzy clarinet score adds both comical bounce and sweet reflection, both complementing Soto's multi-layered tale of a soulful, deluded artist attempting to navigate a world where art is commodified.

1-2 Special releases "A Poet" in select theaters on 1/30/26, expanding on 2/6/26.