Screening times:
Saturday, April 18, 5:45 PM
Thursday, April 23, 6:30 PM

Simón Mesa Soto | Colombia, Germany, Sweden | 2025 | 120m
Spanish with English subtitles

Oscar Restrepo’s obsession with poetry has brought him no glory. Aging and erratic and mostly drunk, he has succumbed to the cliché of the poet in the shadows. Meeting Yurlady, a teenage girl from humble roots, and helping her cultivate her talent brings some light to his days. But dragging her into the world of poets may not be the way. This darkly comic Colombian feature premiered in Un Certain Regard at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where it was awarded the Grand Jury Prize.

Director Simón Mesa Soto looked to his own creative dilemma as inspiration for his second feature: “I thought about giving up filming a few years ago, when I finished my first film. A sort of existential crisis. Then I pictured myself in about 20 years. Who would I become if I left behind the foolishness of film making? That’s when I decided I should make a film about the worst version of myself in a few years as a way to avoid becoming that.”

“A Poet” rides its wave of misfit compassion so beautifully because its contradictions live inside Rios’s howling, pitiable shambles of a character.” - Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

“Visually eloquent and linguistically engaging.” - Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com

“Simón Mesa Soto really owns his own voice, mixing high-art with bad taste to piece apart the mechanisms of a mess-up." - Ben Croll, IndieWire

WINNER: Un Certain Regard Grand Jury Prize - Cannes, 2025
WINNER: Bright Horizons Award (Simón Mesa Soto) - Melbourne International Film Festival 2025

Tickets $12 ($11.40 at the door if available)