A Poet

A jury prize winner at Cannes, Colombian director Simón Mesa Soto’s A Poet is an affecting and bitterly funny satire about art and privilege. In a mesmerising central performance Ubeimar Rios plays Oscar Restrepo, a maladapted middle aged poet who struggles to make ends meet. He takes a teaching job and there he meets the talented working class teenager Yurlady who fills her notebooks with powerful, unaffected poetry. Becoming her champion proves much more difficult than he anticipates.