How a Quiet Film About a Failed Poet Put Colombian Cinema on the Map
COLOMBIA · CULTURE
Key Facts
—The film: A Poet, a Colombian tragicomedy directed by Simon Mesa Soto, set in Medellin.
—The breakthrough: It won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival.
—The campaign: Colombia chose it as the country’s entry for the Oscars and the Goyas.
—The reach: The film has toured more than fifty festivals and opened in US theatres.
—The maker: Mesa Soto won a short-film Palme d’Or in 2014, so the festival pedigree is not new.
—The backing: It is a co-production with Germany and Sweden, built on public film funds.
A small, wry film about a washed-up writer in Medellin has become the unlikely flag-bearer for Colombian cinema, carrying a top Cannes prize into the Oscar and Goya races and drawing new attention to a film industry built on patient public funding.
A small story carrying Colombian cinema abroad
The film at the centre of the moment is modest by design. A Poet, known in Spanish as Un Poeta, follows Oscar Restrepo, an ageing writer in Medellin who published a couple of books in his youth and has spent the years since drifting and drinking.
His life shifts when he takes a teaching job and meets a gifted teenage student. Seeing a spark of the talent he once had, he tries to guide her, with results that are by turns funny and painful.
It is a tragicomedy about the cost of choosing art as a life. Reviewers have praised its deadpan humour and its refusal to flatter the romance of the struggling artist.
Director Simon Mesa Soto shot it on grainy sixteen-millimetre film, a choice that gives the comedy a worn, intimate texture rather than a polished sheen.
The setting matters too. Medellin, a city long defined abroad by a darker reputation, here becomes the everyday backdrop for poetry readings, dive bars and the small humiliations of a creative life.
From Cannes to the awards season
The film’s profile took off at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section, one of the event’s most closely watched strands for new voices.
From there it kept collecting honours. It took the top Latin American prize at San Sebastian, the main competition award at Santiago’s festival, and several prizes in Lima and Havana, among more than fifty festival stops.
Colombia’s film academy then chose it as the country’s official entry for the Oscars and the Goyas. It also earned a nomination at the Independent Spirit Awards in the United States.
A US theatrical run followed, with screenings and director Q and A sessions, the kind of campaign that keeps a small foreign-language film in the awards conversation through the season.
It also became a genuine hit at home, drawing large audiences in Colombian cinemas, an unusual feat for a low-budget arthouse title. That domestic embrace gave the international campaign a confident base to build on.
A director who already knew the path
Mesa Soto is not a newcomer to this stage. He won a short-film Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2014 and returned with his debut feature, which also played at the festival, so the pedigree was established before this film.
He has spoken about drawing the story from his own doubts as a filmmaker, asking what a life in art is worth when the rewards are thin. That personal root is part of why the comedy lands as more than a joke.
The cast mixes trained actors with first-timers, including the lead, whose performance has drawn some of the warmest notices. The effect is a film that feels closer to life than to a studio production.
That blend of professional and untrained faces is a hallmark of much recent regional cinema. It keeps budgets low and lends the work a documentary honesty that festival juries have rewarded.
Why it matters for the region
The success says something about how Latin American films now reach the world. A Poet is a co-production with Germany and Sweden, stitched together from Colombian and European public film funds rather than a single big backer.
That model has become the regional norm. It lets directors keep creative control while spreading the financial risk, and it has carried a string of Latin American titles onto the festival circuit in recent years.
For Colombia specifically, the film is a calling card. A country better known abroad for other headlines is being represented by a quiet story about poetry, failure and the stubborn pull of making something.
Whether or not it lands a nomination, the run has already done its work. It has put a new Colombian name in front of programmers and audiences who will be watching for what he does next.
For a foreign viewer, that is the easiest way in. A Poet is less a national showcase than a human one, and its reach abroad rests on how widely its small, stubborn hope translates.
Frequently asked questions
What is A Poet about?
It follows Oscar Restrepo, a washed-up writer in Medellin who takes a teaching job and tries to mentor a gifted teenage student, in a tragicomedy about the cost of a life in art.
What has it won?
It won the Jury Prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section, plus top awards at San Sebastian, Santiago, Lima and Havana, and is Colombia’s Oscar and Goya entry.
Who directed it?
Simon Mesa Soto, a Colombian director who won a short-film Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2014 and drew the story partly from his own doubts about a life in film.
Why does it matter for Latin American film?
It shows how regional cinema reaches the world: a Colombian story financed as a co-production with Germany and Sweden, built on public film funds rather than one big backer.
Connected Coverage
For more on the region’s screens, see our coverage of the Rosario Latin American Film Festival, Brazil’s new public streaming service Tela Brasil, and the call for entries at Festival do Rio’s Premiere Brasil.
Read More from The Rio Times