‘A Poet’ Trailer – A Washed-up Poet Reedems Himself in Simón Mesa Soto’s Colombian Oscar Entry

Simón Mesa Soto’s A Poet (Un Poeta) is a darkly comic, bittersweet tale starring Ubeimar Ríos as Oscar Restrepo, a washed-up poet slipping into obscurity, and Rebeca Andrade as Yurlady, a sharp-eyed teenager whose raw talent draws him into a mentorship he’s both flattered by and completely unprepared for.

With a supporting cast that includes Guillermo Cardona, Allison Correa, Margarita Soto, and Humberto Restrepo, A Poet blends humor and pathos to explore the messy contradictions of an artist’s life.

A Poet premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Jury Prize. It also screened at AFI FEST, and was selected as the Colombian Oscar entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards.

The film will open in U.S. theaters starting on January 30th, 2026.

In A Poet, 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.

Watch the official trailer for A Poet (Un Poeta) above.