A Poet

Play trailer

1:34

A Poet

Now Playing

2h 3m

Drama

Comedy

Play Trailer

Watchlist

Watchlist

Tomatometer

Popcornmeter

100%

Tomatometer

47 Reviews

Popcornmeter

Fewer than 50 Ratings

Middle-aged and erratic, Oscar is a failed writer who has given up on life. Unemployed and living with family, he wanders the streets of Medellín in a drunken stupor, lamenting the state of literature in his home country, where he has succumbed to the cliché of the tortured artist. However, the opportunity to mentor a young student offers a chance at redemption, if he doesn't screw it up first. In a performance marked by darkly comic pathos, first-time actor Ubeimar Rios stars in Simón Mesa Soto's Un Certain Regard Jury Prize-winner A Poet, a raw and riotous farce about how good deeds are often met with the universe's idea of cruel and unusually poetic punishment.

Now in Theaters

Now Playing

Buy Tickets

Critics Consensus

Anchored by writer-director Simón Mesa Soto's wry detail and Ubeimar Rios' brilliantly uneasy performance, A Poet uses the tortured artist archetype to craft a story that's as darkly funny as it is unexpectedly affecting.

Read Critics Reviews

Kimberley Jones

Austin Chronicle

14h

3.5/5

Mesa Soto initially mines wry humor from Oscar’s sad-sackness; he and editor Ricardo Saravia are especially good at scene transitions that land like a punchline, and the marvelous Rios – small of stature and existentially slumped – cuts a comical figure.

Go to Full Review

Kat Sachs

Chicago Reader

Feb 11

A Poet is worth seeing for the moments of genuine emotion and elegiac contemplation, the wry humor, Rios’s unguarded performance, and the gritty production design and cinematography.

Go to Full Review

Bob Mondello

NPR

Feb 9

Filmmaker Soto casts a skeptical eye on all of this, shooting in grainy 16-millimeter, and using musical scoring to underline the absurdity and pretension.

Go to Full Review

Dennis Harvey

48 Hills

6d

A Poet is a relatively small story. Still, it traverses a wide arc, starting out as caustic satire, finally arriving at an understated depth and tenderness.

Go to Full Review

Rob Thomas

Not That Rob Thomas (Substack)

6d

3.5/4

We end up feeling for this strange, off-putting man, even if we wouldn’t want to be sitting on the barstool next to him.

Go to Full Review

Robert Denerstein

Denerstein Unleashed

Feb 20

Soto's small-scale realism suits material about someone whose life can't, and probably never will, match the way he sees himself, but it lands gently enough to be touching.

Go to Full Review

Read all reviews

Dustin S

Feb 17

Charming story, funny and poingant, with plenty of interesting things to say about class, art, and families without hitting you over the head with a message or proselytizing.

See more

jesse v

Feb 8

"'But I was trying to help' as he says not knowing age boundaries and when to stop being insistent" the movie. The ending was a hard cut unfortunately.

See more

Ken D

@Wayfarer 3d

It’s not easy to be a poet. Oscar has no money, his family is like "get a real job," he still lives with his mother despite not being a young man, and nobody’s reading his books. Add to that, he is a chronic screw up. Failed as a husband and father, as a teacher and as a mentor. And he drinks. So maybe he wakes up sometimes lying in the street clutching a beer bottle. During a brief stint as a teacher he takes an interest in a young student who also writes poems. She is from a large, very poor family and can never overcome her environment. Oscar’s attempts to help her prove a mixed blessing. Set in a poor neighborhood in a Colombian city, the movie contrasts the rhythmic, artistic vibe of the poet with the hard life of families in poverty. A lack of expectations is expressed as indifferenc. But we do get a glimpse of the passion of the poet. And amidst all the anguish, some empathy emerges from unexpected places.

See more

Agatha S

5d

The beginning is a little slow but stick with it. Sometimes it guarded us from laughing too much, afraid of betraying it's artistic integrity. For example it set up a joke and didn't complete it several times throughout. A little slow at a few moments. Excellent sound track. Guess the message is : have grace for yourself and others.

See more

Myron M.

Feb 10

This movie has very good acting, has very intense emotional scenes. I felt myself rooting for the main character despite all his character flaws. The movie has some interesting plot changes as it is depicted in various chapters through the picture. . You won’t see a movie very often where a poet and poetry holds center stage in a movie that takes place in Columbia.

See more

David C

@ElDeiby Feb 4

Must watch, excellent movie

See more

Read all reviews

Read More

Read Less

POST RATING

WRITE A REVIEW

EDIT REVIEW

Simón Mesa Soto

Director

Ubeimar Rios

Oscar

Rebeca Andrade

Yurlady

Guillermo Cardona

Efraín

Alisson Correa

Daniela

Margarita Soto

Teresita

A Poet: Trailer 1

1:34

View more videos

View more photos

Synopsis

Middle-aged and erratic, Oscar is a failed writer who has given up on life. Unemployed and living with family, he wanders the streets of Medellín in a drunken stupor, lamenting the state of literature in his home country, where he has succumbed to the cliché of the tortured artist. However, the opportunity to mentor a young student offers a chance at redemption, if he doesn't screw it up first. In a performance marked by darkly comic pathos, first-time actor Ubeimar Rios stars in Simón Mesa Soto's Un Certain Regard Jury Prize-winner A Poet, a raw and riotous farce about how good deeds are often met with the universe's idea of cruel and unusually poetic punishment.

Director: Simón Mesa Soto
Producer: Simón Mesa Soto, Juan Sarmiento G., Manuel Ruiz Montealegre
Screenwriter: Simón Mesa Soto
Distributor: 1-2 Special
Production Co: Ocúltimo, Medio de Contención Producciones
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Original Language: Spanish
Release Date (Theaters): Jan 30, 2026, Limited
Box Office (Gross USA): $158.7K
Runtime: 2h 3m

Most Popular at Home Now