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| José Asunción Silva |
A POET (Un Poeta) B Colombia Germany Sweden (123 mi) 2025 d: Simón Mesa Soto
The trials and travails of a tortured artist, who comes under extreme pressure to be relevant after some early successes that have left him at an impasse in his life, literally struggling to survive in shifting market demands that have left him behind, leaving him on the outside looking in. There’s something deeply uncomfortable about the experience of watching a failed artist, yet Óscar Restrepo (first time actor Ubeimar Rios, a high school philosophy teacher in real life) believes that poetry is born out of suffering, using it as a refuge from his own inner turmoil, a source of his own identity that is slowly disintegrating. Once a promising voice in Colombian literature and a rigorous admirer of José Asunción Silva, the most important Colombian poet, considered one of the leaders of Latin American Modern Poetry, Óscar published two slim volumes of poetry in his 20’s, and now he’s an unemployed, middle-aged drunkard who still lives with his mother and has lost the respect of his estranged teenage daughter. Although he no longer writes, he does occasionally go on self-aggrandizing rants at the local poets’ association, where he is welcomed as one of their own, yet still kept at arm’s length because of his erratic and often self-destructive behavior. A highly personal, semi-autobiographical reflection on the absurdities of pursuing a creative life, the pressures of the independent film industry, and the pursuit of meaning, coming out of what he calls “the worst version” of himself, Soto is a Colombian director, screenwriter, and producer who won prestigious awards for his earlier short films, which were screened at major film festivals around the globe, where all that acclaim brought with it intense pressure to remain worthy of that admiration. Colombia, of course, is the home of famed novelist Gabriel García Márquez who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, largely for the colossal impact felt by what is one of the greatest novels ever written, One Hundred Years of Solitude, a 1967 magnum opus work that put Colombia and Latin America on the map, so there is immense pressure to maintain that legacy. Told over four chapters, this is a film that celebrates the existential triumph of struggling for an artistic ideal, even in utter obscurity and failure, rather than settle for the instant superficial gratification that commercialism brings, as the American and European market demands from Latin America insist upon poverty, marginalization, and violence. Considering the current climate, where poetry, like opera and ballet, is struggling to survive in this era of instant social media gratification, this film questions what kind of art survives today, truly authentic personal art or superficial art that can be sold internationally, as Soto challenges the idea of turning Colombian suffering into an exportable product, where art transforms misery porn into an aesthetic commodity. Instead of drug trafficking, graphic violence, and explicit trauma, there’s something to be said in the everyday banality of the silent humiliation of failure.
Óscar is not your typical protagonist, as he’s not handsome or charming, but is mostly a sad sack with a knack for ruining the moment, spirited and full of bluster in his drunken public outbursts lamenting the state of poetry in his home country before falling asleep in a drunken heap on the streets of downtown Medellín, like the discarded remains of yesterday’s trash, joining the invisible ranks of the homeless. In Colombia, José Asunción Silva appears on the 5000 peso bill, while Gabriel García Márquez appears on the 50,000 peso bill, an everyday reality that disgusts Óscar, with an ever-looming portrait of José Asunción Silva hanging on his wall representing the personal intimacy and melancholy that he stood for. What truly stands out is the jazzy, ambient soundtrack composed and performed by Swedish composer Matti Bye in collaboration with the Swedish instrumental group Trio Ramberget, like Dream Circle YouTube (3:06), Wrong Choices YouTube (4:11), and Mysterious Meltdown YouTube (2:06), which uniquely features a clarinet, yet also this Los Zafiros classic rooted in American Doo-wop music from the Cuban filín movement in 1960, La Luna en Tu Mirada YouTube (2:37), which introduces each new chapter, adding a starkly unique aspect of interior contemplation that provides underlying layers of poetic humanism to this quirky and absurdly offbeat film. Rejecting the clean aesthetic, feeling more like a caricature that embraces imperfection, wearing almost the exact same clothes throughout, with the same pants and only one change of shirt, Óscar blends into the urban landscape as someone you never take a second look at, an invisible presence sinking in the quagmire of urban rot and decay, tortured by the misery that envelops him, as he feels unworthy of the film’s title, yet that’s all he lives for, striving for something that feels inaccessible. After the exhaustion felt from the filmmaker’s his first film, AMPARO (2021), which left him empty and emotionally depleted, Soto considered abandoning his dream, this compulsive obsession of filmmaking, thinking he might become a full-time professor, deciding instead to portray the endless frustration that goes hand-in-hand with artistic creation, initially conceiving the film in an awkward mumblecore style but gradually expanded its comedic elements, describing the aesthetic as a “reality show about poets” that feels raw and dynamic. In order to maintain a naturalistic and authentic feel, Soto utilized mostly all first-time non-professional actors, who bring their own honesty to the material, which is typically compared to the kinetic style of the Safdie Brothers, who are renowned for a frantic, hyper-realistic, and anxiety-inducing aesthetic, presented like a series of vignettes, often confined to congested street scenes which effortlessly capture the qualities that define the region. Winner of the Jury Prize (2nd place) at Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2025, the film is shot on Super 16 mm by Juan Sarmiento Grisales, who also shot his earlier films, giving the film a grainy, naturalistic look, with an in-your-face style of handheld cameras that can be dizzying, following Óscar everywhere, always capturing his immediate reactions, where the entire film is like a Charles Bukowski poem, so perfectly realized in Brent Hamer’s Factotum (2005), alcoholic, dirty, messy, disheveled, and disorganized, yet out of that chaos comes an appreciation for beauty in the most unlikely places.
Flailing in obscurity, Óscar tries to reinvent himself in order to gain the respect of his teenage daughter Daniela (Allison Correa), who literally wants nothing to do with him, as he was never there for her growing up, but in order to pay for her college expenses he decides to teach poetry in high school classrooms, which is a tough sell, yet it’s there that he discovers the hidden talent of Yurlady (Rebeca Andrade), who comes from humble origins, but has a simple yet unpretentious flair to her writing, mostly describing daily events, A Poet | Exclusive Clip YouTube (1:48). When he touts her prowess for the upcoming Poetry Festival, it’s met with near unanimous approval, as she’s starkly different than what the organizers typically present, opening a door to new possibilities, as she is expected to represent marginalized peoples across Latin America. When he meets with the organizers, Efrain (Guillermo Cardona) and Alonso (Humberto Restrepo), two men who are intimately familiar with Óscar’s erratic pattern of being unreliable and undependable, they are shocked to discover the unlimited talent of this young student, believing she is the poem Óscar has always been searching for, wanting her to read for the opening performance, hoping to generate publicity and donations from the authenticity of her blackness and her poverty, reflecting the influence of foreign embassies on local cultural institutions, informing Óscar that she needs encouragement, perhaps new clothes, and food for her large family that is barely eking out a living, hoping to gain their approval as well. With everything riding on his young prodigy, Óscar projects everything onto her shoulders, his lost youth, his artistic frustrations, and his need for redemption, which she finds flattering, but she doesn’t write out of suffering and doesn’t want to be like him, nonetheless she’s a big hit, with a roomful of admirers, yet in celebration things spiral out of control, fueled by a series of Óscar’s poor decisions and drunken ramblings, A POET | Clip 1 - "Black Holes" YouTube (50 seconds), as utter chaos quickly escalates into a full-scale scandal, creating an epic misadventure for everyone involved, the kind of thing that can destroy lives. Of course, Óscar is blamed, turning his hopes and dreams upside down, leaving him hopelessly rejected, as if he’s fallen down a black hole and can’t climb his way back out, where everything imaginable that could go wrong does, as he’s literally exiled from the only community that ever accepted him in the first place. After an obsessive pursuit of cultural recognition, the film has a tender way of highlighting the two teenage women, Yurlady and Daniela, who are the real focus of the film, coming across as the freest spirits, each having a major impact on Óscar, who spends his whole life seeking cultural recognition, yet what really matters to him is a more humble ambition, the recognition of his own daughter, as it is that emotional connection that he needs the most, leaving the ending ambiguously open. A raw and unflinching look in the mirror at the trouble and misfortune we get ourselves into, where all hope is seemingly lost, yet art has a way of reminding us that others have faced their own excruciating torments, yet somehow their work can not only survive but unite us as well, finding truth in the rubble of our existence.
