SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
There is a belief that to make great art, you need to endure great pain. And to be fair, a lot of great art does come from people who have suffered. Think of Frida Kahlo or Vincent van Gogh. But with this new film, director Simon Mesa Soto chose a different path. NPR's Manuela López Restrepo explains.
MANUELA LÓPEZ RESTREPO, BYLINE: The award-winning Colombian filmmaker is currently making the rounds with his 2025 indie darling, "A Poet," or "Un Poeta," that premiered and won at Cannes. The film, in theaters now, follows 50-something-year-old Medellin resident Oscar Restrepo, who realizes that none of his dreams have turned out the way he had hoped.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "A POET")
UBEIMAR RIOS: (As Oscar Restrepo, speaking Spanish).
LÓPEZ RESTREPO: Simon Mesa Soto says the poet's story is inspired by his own relationship to art.
SIMON MESA SOTO: My own posture as a depressive kind of artist, that you have to struggle, and as I grow old, I have to get rid of that idea. I have to destroy that idea of - that you have to suffer or - and try to find light and try to enjoy.
LÓPEZ RESTREPO: At the beginning of "A Poet," Oscar isn't on the same page. He's frequently overwhelmed by his early failed promise, alcoholism, unemployment and estrangement from his teenage daughter, Daniela. He insists to anyone who will listen that the darkness of creativity requires complete devotion.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "A POET")
RIOS: (As Oscar Restrepo, speaking Spanish).
LÓPEZ RESTREPO: Oscar's life takes a turn when he starts teaching at a local high school and meets Yurlady, a student with a natural gift for the written word.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "A POET")
REBECA ANDRADE: (As Yurlady, speaking Spanish).
LÓPEZ RESTREPO: Yurlady comes from a poor family with an absent father. She could mine that struggle for her art but instead writes from a place of poignant simplicity about the sun, her bedroom and her feelings as a teenage girl. He decides he should champion her talent, despite the fact that she doesn't really seem very interested in becoming a great poet. If Oscar represents Soto's darkness, Yurlady must be the opposite.
SOTO: And I kind of use cinema also as a therapy, you know, like, to put my dilemmas out there, my traumas out there, in a way, and to reconnect with cinema so I don't become this poet, you know, this kind of frustrated, dark person who is upset and questioning everything.
LÓPEZ RESTREPO: "A Poet" is darkly funny, stylish and raw. Perhaps that's why it's resonated with audiences worldwide, despite its origins as a low-budget labor of love, straight from Colombia.
SOTO: Our job also as filmmakers to try and show the world this can exist. This film can exist. And I'm very happy that when we released the film in Colombia, like, many Colombian people felt the film - like, it was theirs, you know, like it belonged to them.
LÓPEZ RESTREPO: And if you're part of the Colombian diaspora, it's a breath of fresh air to see a movie that is granted the opportunity to just be human instead of rehashing the same tired tropes and hazy yellow filters you've probably seen in films set in Latin America. But even if you're not, "A Poet" gives you a peek into the dynamics of Medellin as a city, how families, homes and communities look for a bunch of regular people. That realness is also a product of the cast. Ubeimar Rios, who plays Oscar, was a longtime philosophy teacher from the area, and Yurlady's Rebeca Andrade was found at a local school casting.
SOTO: It can be a great film with cinematic value and qualities, but also to talk to people, you know, in Colombia, and they could laugh and cry and feel, you know?
LÓPEZ RESTREPO: It's that emotional response from people all over that Soto says has invigorated him to keep leading with light.
SOTO: I don't want to be a sad poet. I want to enjoy my life and to enjoy the process of making cinema.
LÓPEZ RESTREPO: "A Poet" shows audiences that maybe in making art, the agony is optional.
Manuela López Restrepo, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF REFUGEE CAMP ALL-STARS SONG, "THE SWEETEST THING (FEAT LAURYN HILL)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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