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.
Critics' Reviews
90
"A Poet," which is split into four chapters, is a film about the difficulties and fears of fatherhood. It’s telling, for instance, that Oscar has struggled to write since Daniela’s birth. Consequently, he’s a pathetic absentee father who’s taken that failure into his poetry. His futility transfers to his relationship with Yurlady. Rather than believing that Yurlady isn’t particularly interested in poetry—she just writes what’s in her head—he sells her as a prodigy worthy of support from a young poets’ collective run by the far more successful writer Efrain, who immediately sees the impoverished Yurlady as an avenue toward bilking money from an exoticizing Danish donor.
- Released January 30, 2026