Jazz feeds on tension. Its power lies not only in the notes that are played, but in those that are not, or that are out of scale—in the awkward silences and the unresolved dissonances. It’s in this logic of improvisation, structural risk, and the deliberate breaking of harmony that A Poet, the new film by Simón Mesa Soto, seems to find inspiration. In it, the Colombian director does not pursue order, but rather the internal rhythm of his character: abrupt cuts that throw us off balance and scenes that follow one another not through narrative continuity but through emotional impulse. As if the very structure of the film were a free jazz piece, made of detours and repetitions. A Poet does not present itself as a linear drama or a tale of redemption, but rather as a dark satire disguised as light comedy—a tragicomic ballad about the precarity of artistic life in Latin America. It’s an unflinching portrait of Oscar, a man who calls himself a poet despite not having written in years. He repeats it with fervor, even shouts it drunkenly through the streets of Medellín: “¡Poesía!” That insistence is not just a pose—it’s all he has left, an identity disintegrating, surviving only through the ritual of repetition and alcohol.

What sets this film apart is not its critique of the artistic system (something already explored by many filmmakers), but the way it does so: with hilarious, sometimes uncomfortable humor, but never cynicism. Comedy in A Poet doesn’t soften the conflicts; it makes them more visible, inserting absurd scenes, biting commentary, or shots that seem out of place but that, like in jazz, find their meaning in the totality of the piece.

Oscar, the protagonist of A Poet, can be many things (an absent father, an alcoholic, incompetent, egotistical—even a bad poet), but he’s not a bad man. That contradiction is one of the film’s great virtues: it gets us to care about someone we should not admire. Mesa Soto allows us to see humanity even in Oscar’s gravest mistakes. And it is precisely that sense of affection that grants the story its moral “height.” Because Oscar doesn’t exploit anyone; he doesn’t instrumentalize Yurlady’s (his young student’s) talent for personal gain, unlike nearly everyone else around her. Everyone sees her as an economic opportunity—her parents, her community, the intellectuals. Everyone except Oscar, who sees in her the living embodiment of what he has already lost: the possibility of believing in poetry. But A Poet doesn’t fall into nostalgia or sentimentality. Its editing refuses to settle into a comfortable reading. Just when we seem to be witnessing a moment of genuine intimacy, Mesa Soto inserts an over-the-top joke or a line of dialogue that disrupts the tone. It’s a deliberate tactic, though not always effective. At times, the accumulation of gags undercuts the depth the film so carefully builds. There are scenes where the force of the social humor overwhelms the critical power that supports it. And yet, that very imbalance—that teetering between the ridiculous and the tragic—is part of the film’s identity. It doesn’t seek realism, but believability within its own logic.

In that intersection of the local and the universal, A Poet unfolds a sharp reflection on the place of art in our societies. Who can be a poet today? What material conditions make creation possible—or impossible? To what extent does artistic recognition depend on the legitimizing discourses imposed from the Global North (like the Dutch embassy)? When Yurlady is invited to a poetry reading, she’s not simply asked to read her work: she’s required to dress it up in suffering, to make it sound “serious and Latin American,” to speak of race, poverty, and trauma. As if the voice of a young Afro-Colombian woman could only be defined through the cliché of a life marked by pain and marginalization—as if she weren’t free to tell other stories. That demand—so present in international circuits (including film festivals)—is depicted here with intelligence and subtlety, through small but incisive scenes. The satire, in that sense, is not limited to the world of poetry. It extends to the education system, to dysfunctional families, and even to the mentor figure, who, instead of guiding, drags his student into a dead end. Oscar’s failure as a teacher is perhaps more painful than his failure as a poet, because his relationship with Yurlady holds his last chance at redemption. Rather than opting for cheap sentimentality, the film chooses absurd humor—like when Oscar flees through the streets, chased by the girl’s brother. The scene is ridiculous, yes, but also deeply tragic: it’s the moment when the system demands its due, and the protagonist pays for all the mistakes he didn’t see or chose to ignore.

Far from constructing an epic of the misunderstood artist, A Poet reveals the cracks in that image. Oscar is not a marginalized genius but a man with moderate success who remains attached to an outdated idea of himself. His greatness, if it exists, lies in his stubbornness—his obstinate belief in poetry when everything around him seems to mock it. The artist here is no martyr, but someone wading through the filth of the cultural market without map or compass. Oscar has no artist friends; his life is a simulacrum sustained by his mother’s help and his daughter’s pity. And yet, there is an honesty in him that is deeply moving. When he stops in front of Yurlady’s notebook and reads her poems, he does so in silence, with a mix of admiration and certainty. It’s his moment of greatest truth—and perhaps his only victory: recognizing in another what he can no longer create. A Poet thinks of art through the small and everyday, without ever renouncing its transformative power. Its boldness—its wild editing, its overflowing humor, its social critique unafraid of the ridiculous—makes it a singular proposal that, even in its excesses, maintains a precise coherence. Like a jazz piece played by enraged and drunken musicians, A Poet goes off-key, falls apart, and puts itself back together in each scene to show that art flows through the most hidden and unexpected corners—whether you’re a poet or not—giving breath and new chances.