Nothing prepared me for when poetry got punk.
Forget berets and brooding cafés. The festival trailer for A Poet (originally Un Poeta) smashes the stereotype of the tortured literary genius with a bat dipped in irony. Colombian filmmaker Simón Mesa Soto's second feature—set to premiere in the 2025 Cannes Film Festival's Un Certain Regard section—introduces Oscar, an aging poet whose career arc flatlined years ago. But this isn't some self-serious meditation on failure. It's sharply funny. Quietly tragic. And full of bite.
“You're unemployed,” someone quips in the trailer after Oscar declares, “I'm a poet.” Boom. Mic drop.
That line alone captures what makes this film's tone so refreshing. We've seen variations of Oscar before—the misunderstood genius, the misunderstood alcoholic, the misunderstood narcissist. (Pick your poison; film history's stocked.) But here, Ubeimar Rios plays Oscar with just enough manic twitch and bruised dignity to turn cliché into character. He's not chasing glory anymore. He's chasing relevance—and maybe redemption—through Yurlady, a teenage prodigy from the streets who might actually have the talent he never did.
Subverting the Poet-as-Martyr Archetype
Where Hollywood gave us Dead Poets Society and Cannes gave us Paterson, A Poet leans into the absurdity of romanticizing failure. It knows the poetry world isn't all mystique and metaphors—it's unpaid gigs and stale coffee and middle-aged men clinging to past stanzas. Oscar isn't some tortured genius in hiding. He's a warning sign on two legs.
The twist? Yurlady may be his redemption—or his ruin. And the trailer hints that dragging her into this artistic underworld might be less a rescue and more a reckoning.
Echoes of Paterson, But Funkier
Jim Jarmusch's Paterson (2016) also premiered at Cannes and featured an understated poet (played by Adam Driver) quietly crafting beauty amid routine. A Poet nods to this lineage but flips the emotional thermostat. Where Paterson is serene, Un Poeta is simmering. Where Paterson observes, A Poet prods.
The tonal clash works. According to The Playlist, Simón Mesa Soto's breakout feature Amparo was lauded for its raw realism—here, that same eye collides with the surreal theatricality of the poetry world. The result? Something that feels both grounded and just slightly off its rocker.
“Aging and erratic, he has succumbed to the cliché of the poet in the shadows.”
— Official synopsis
That line stings more than it flatters. It's like a career obituary written by a frenemy.
What Cannes Is Really Celebrating
Cannes loves a tortured man with a pen. But this time, it's not celebrating his suffering—it's interrogating it. A Poet might just be the first festival darling to side-eye its own protagonist. And that's what gives it teeth.
We've seen a decade of art films glorifying the “mentor-student” dynamic—Whiplash, Call Me by Your Name, The Souvenir. But rarely do those narratives ask: What does the mentor get out of this? And worse—What are they taking?
Soto's film seems ready to go there.
Would you risk dragging someone into your broken dream just to feel relevant again?
Yeah. Thought so. Comment below.
