One of the great character studies of the year, Simón Mesa Soto’s Cannes Un Certain Regard winner A Poet follows a down-and-out writer trying to find his way through a complicated situation attempting to mentor a young student. Colombia’s Oscar entry was picked up by 1-2 Special for a release beginning on January 30, and now the new trailer has arrived.
Here’s the 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.”
I said in my Cannes review, “Far removed from the mournful yearnings of A Quiet Passion––much less the quotidian, calming rhythms of Paterson––Simón Mesa Soto’s Medellín-set second feature finds unexpected poetry in the jagged, pained misery of dashed dreams and misinterpreted, career-ending good intentions. A Poet’s Oscar Restrepo (Ubeimar Rios), though 2,000 miles south of the down-on-their-luck, desperate characters often captured by Sean Price Williams’ camera, would find some recognition in the shared Sisyphean struggle of striking out at every opportunity life offers up. This Un Certain Regard jury prize winner is a darkly humorous, cautionary character study in letting one’s long-lost creative dreams drive every decision––one in which Soto, more often than not, finds empathy as his protagonist circles the drain.”
See the trailer below.
The post A Poet Trailer: Colombia’s Oscar Entry and Cannes Winner Arrives This January first appeared on The Film Stage.
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