The misfortunes of a down-and-out poet are the main theme of A Poet [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Simón Mesa Soto
scheda film], Colombian director Simón Mesa Soto’s fourth Cannes entry, playing in the Un Certain Regard section of the 78th edition of the festival – and winning the Jury Prize to boot (see the news). The director shared some thoughts about the artistic vocation of both his protagonist and himself.

Cineuropa: What sparked the idea for the story?
Simón Mesa Soto: When I made my first film, I was already a bit troubled by the idea of cinema. In Colombia, it’s difficult to make a film, especially with the financing situation there. I work as a film teacher, and that’s what pays my bills. Then, when I shoot, I just quit for a year, and then I go back to teaching – I’m probably back again for the next semester. In fact, just before I made this one, I was thinking of quitting directing and just teaching. Instead, I decided to make this movie, which shows the worst version of myself in 20 years’ time.

Why did you choose the vocation of poet for Oscar, your main character?
I know a bit about the poetry scene in Medellín, Colombia, a country with a big poetry tradition. I think of these poets a little like “artists from the past”. They are not part of any institutionalised elite; they’re more like Bohemians, Bukowskian figures. They don’t make any money at all from their art.

Oscar does have an education, though, as a teacher. How did he end up like he did, do you think – unemployed, drinking too much and quite dysfunctional in general?
He’s even a university teacher, and I actually based him on some of my own university teachers. In their twenties and thirties, they were more functional, as you are at that age, and then with age, they coped less well with life and things like alcohol, for example, and got into this Bohemian lifestyle that gradually took over.

But then, Oscar meets Yurlady, the pupil who writes and gives him a purpose in showing her what he thinks is the right way to do it. Can you talk about her?
When I started writing about Oscar and all his failures, I had so many questions in my head that I wanted to address. The Yurlady character is a little like the characters in my other films, from the poorer neighbourhoods. In Colombian cinema, it’s usually the privileged who portray the underprivileged on screen, which is a dilemma. There’s some kind of selfishness in that relationship; it’s like this character becomes your “art”. When we come here to the Cannes Film Festival from Colombia to show our social dilemmas, it all becomes quite market-like. And Yurlady is the catalyst I try to portray as this dilemma. Oscar and other members of the poetry circle use her as their “art”, and she’s not really interested at all; she just likes to write and draw in her notebook.

Could we call the film social realist, perhaps like a Latin Ken Loach?
Ken Loach has certainly got good humour in his films, and I love his work. I’ve looked to him for inspiration in previous movies, especially for his narratives. As for the “social realist” term, I hope to avoid such a label because this is simply Colombian society that I am trying to show. You could call it a Loach-type film, but equally a Woody Allen-type film. Of course, there are social issues here, but that’s just the way people live.

How did you find the professional and non-professional actors for the film?
We have a great casting team, who spent a year looking for the right people. We used professionals and non-professionals, always going for the most appropriate one for the role. We found Yurlady by going to a lot of different schools, and we tested about 1,000 girls before we found Rebeca Andrade, who was just amazing. Ubeimar Rios, my Oscar, is the relative of a friend of mine, who showed me his picture on Facebook and said, “This is my uncle, and he might be your poet.” And he certainly was.

Your films usually have European co-producers, and the country that’s been along for the ride the most is Sweden. How did this relationship come about?
I made a short in 2014 called Leidi, which was here at Cannes as well, and David Herdies, a Swedish producer, saw it. He was doing a project at the time called Break the Silence, which dealt with the sexual exploitation of children across the world, and he contacted me to contribute a short, which became Madre in 2016. We got along well and have continued working together. I’m very happy with that. Finding partners is not simple. And I’ve always loved Swedish cinema.