A Poet
Un poeta
Pesnik
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A dark comedy, Mesa Soto's second feature blends wry humour with a perceptive take on Colombia's current social milieu to tell a tale of promise, expectation and failure.

After success in his early 20s, Óscar Restrepo's devotion to poetry has ended up taking him nowhere. Now in his 50s, estranged from his daughter and living with his mother, his life has succumbed to a cliché of unemployment, addiction, insanity and depression. Forced into a grade-school teaching job that he doesn't want, an unexpected opportunity to redeem himself arrives in the form of a remarkably talented teenage student. However, will introducing her into the sordid world of the poets only result in making her life as miserable as his own?

"I know a bit about the poetry scene in Medellín, Colombia, a country with a big poetry tradition. I think of these poets a little like "artists from the past". They are not part of any institutionalised elite; they're more like Bohemians, Bukowskian figures. They don't make any money at all from their art. /.../ Oscar is even a university teacher, and I actually based him on some of my own university teachers. In their twenties and thirties, they were more functional, and then with age, they coped less well with life and things like alcohol, for example, and got into this Bohemian lifestyle that gradually took over." (Simón Mesa Soto)
Section: PANORAMA
Directed by: Simon Mesa Soto
Country, year: Colombia, Sweden, Germany, 2025
Length: 120 minutes
Subtitles: Slovenian
Language: Spanish

Screening in cinema:

Thu, 13.11.2025 21:10 AGRFT Hall
Tue, 18.11.2025 11:00 Kinodvor Cinema
Wed, 19.11.2025 16:00 AGRFT Hall

VOD service:

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*watching movie is possible only from Slovenia.
Screenplay:
Simón Mesa Soto
Cinematography:
Juan Sarmiento Grisales
Music:
Matti Bye
Cast:
Ubeimar Rios (Oscar), Guillermo Cardona (Efrain), Rebeca Andrade (Yurlady), Alisson Correa, Humberto Restrepo, Margarita Soto
Producent:
Ocúltimo & Medio de Contención & ma.ja.de Filmproduktions-GmbH & Momento Film
ocultimo@gmail.com
Distribution:
Demiurg
info@demiurg.si
Sales:
Luxbox
fiorella@luxboxfilms.com
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About director
Born in Medellín, Colombia, in 1986. Studied Audiovisual Communication at Universidad de Antioquia, where he also worked as lecturer in film editing before moving to the UK and graduating in filmmaking from London Film School in 2014. His graduation project, Leidi, won the Short Film Palme d'Or at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. His first feature film, Amparo, received its premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.
Filmography
2014 Leidi (kratki/short)
2021 Amparo
2025 Un poeta (A Poet/Pesnik)