“A Poet”, the story of successes and failures in a rarely told Colombia

“I am a poet. – You are an unemployed person.” These two lines, Óscar’s (Ubeimar Ríos) and his sister Yolanda’s (Adriana Upegui) response, sum up well the view that A Poet – in French cinemas from October 29 – takes of its protagonist.

While he is shunned by readers, the poet's relationship with his publisher hangs by a thread, and the few accolades he received for two collections that constitute his entire oeuvre are already a distant memory. The bottle, however, remains close at hand. “Óscar is a Colombian version of all the Don Quixotes of art. Glory loomed, but it never arrived,” El Magazín Cultural points out .

In this cultural supplement of the major daily newspaper El Espectador, critic Juan Carlos Lemus Polanía applauds the film. From the very first minutes, the tone is set : “without drama or urgency, but imbued with a hilariously sad sadness, almost as subtle as the poetry that Óscar Restrepo, the protagonist, strives to write.” But the plot only truly gets going after the poet, who is also a hardworking teacher, meets Yurlady (Rebeca Andrade) in a Medellín classroom. Yurlady is a working-class teenager who already possesses a magnificent writing style and whom Óscar wants to mentor.