Ag Apolloni
“The Poet” (Spanish: Un poeta; English: A Poet) is a film that exposes the vanity of our time. A film about a man who is stuck between dream and reality. He needs money to send his daughter to college, but his books are not selling. He asks for more advertising for his books, but they suggest he go on TV because that is where books and people are advertised. So, he goes on a show where two others are invited with him, a rapper and an organizer of the Fruit Festival. He wants to read poetry there, but among the 'bullshit' of the guests and moderators, there is no place or attention for love verses. (This is strongly related to our society trapped by television vanities, to the extent that writers, in order to get rich and popular, have to enter stables, farms and television stables). This Colombian poet (Oscar Restrepo), who is modeled after the poet José Asunción Siva (who, after many tragedies that had befallen him, committed suicide at the age of 30), after leaving television becomes convinced that he should have died at the age of thirty.
However, the film also deals with stereotypes such as: the writer as a suffering being, or the fame that can come after death. We see a poet-father who promises his daughter an education at the best faculty, but who only a few minutes later, having no cents in his pocket, asks her for money. Also, while trying to help a talented student and protect her from possible abuse, he complicates the work so much with his infantile behavior that others think he is the beneficiary and the abuser, and thus ends up beaten by her brother.
There is a significant moment of sincerity in the film, when he asks his colleague for his opinion, who bluntly tells him: you can retire like Kafka and Siva, you can die in the hope that after death you will be recognized, but first sit down and write at least one masterpiece like they did. This scene shows that the misunderstood model (Siva), who appears from time to time in the frame, has destroyed the poet's life. So, the dilemma arises whether the poet today should completely isolate himself, or should he go to humiliating shows. The film criticizes both sides and this is its beauty.
In this tragicomic film, the poet is treated as a fragile, sad, poor, naive and infantile being, or, in short, as a grown-up child. The final scene is a masterpiece: as soon as his mother dies, he goes out into the hallway crying like a child, while his daughter appears before him, who had told him the last time that she would not see him until he changed. So, the daughter had advised the father to grow up. Now they are face to face: he cries for his dead mother and his face begins to laugh at the return of his daughter. He cries for the past and laughs at the future, and this is a sign that he is changing, because 'the only thing that is unchangeable is change'.
And finally, the special thing about the film is that the poet Oscar Restrepo is played by Ubeimar Rios, who is not really an actor, but a poet and teacher at a high school in Colombia. He writes poetry and in many ways his role matches his life. In a way, this 'failed poet' plays himself.
This is the second feature film by 40-year-old director Simón Mesa Soto, and it won the Jury Prize at Cannes (Un Certain Regard section), as well as being selected to represent Colombia in the Best International Film category at the Academy Awards, but, following the fate of the Oscar poet, the film failed to be nominated for the 2026 Oscars. In a world focused only on 'success stories', it seems like an act of dissidence to watch a story of failure.
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