The hardships of a struggling, suffering and misunderstood artist (in his own words) and also (according to most others) a whimpering, good-for-nothing bum are richly portrayed in the Medellín-set A Poet, entered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 78th Cannes Film Festival. The film marks Colombian director Simón Mesa Soto’s third time on the Croisette, after he claimed victory in 2014 by winning the Short Film Palme d'Or for Leidi.

“Hi, my name is Oscar. I'm unemployed and I live with my mother,” could be the fitting George Costanza-paraphrased introduction of the antihero of this story. Instead, Oscar (played by Ubeimar Rios) bellows: “I’m A POET!”, which may well be the case, but this hardly pays the bills, even at the bar. He drives around in his mum’s car playing sappy AOR songs, feeling sorry for himself; he borrows money from his estranged teenage daughter; and he gazes admiringly at the picture hanging above his drawer, of his great idol and fellow countryman, poet José Asunción Silva, who committed suicide at the age of 30 by gunshot (he himself seems more prone to a Bukowski lifestyle, however).

Oscar’s own heyday on the national poetry scene is chiefly represented by two tattered softcovers from his mid-twenties, over 30 years ago. Still, he’s welcomed (or at least tolerated) at the local poetry club, where his overbearing manners kind of come with the territory, one mainly populated with middle-aged male bohemians like himself.

As luck would have it (bad luck, Oscar), his ever-patient sister Yolanda (Adriana Upegui) has found him a job opening, as a teacher at a local secondary school. After protesting that he (in case we didn’t know it) is a poet, he bravely decides to carry his cross (ie, spikes his thermos of coffee with booze) and turns up in class. As further luck (or a deus ex machina-like script) will have it, one of Oscar’s new pupils named Yurlady (Rebeca Andrade) turns out to be a writer as well. Not that she knows or cares herself: she seems keener on her new, glittery nail polish, but she carries around a notebook with writings and drawings that makes Oscar clean forget about his thermos.

In the string of events that subsequently unfurl, Mesa Soto manages – at times recalling Ken Loach – to both humorously and thoughtfully touch upon social issues (Yurlady’s overpopulated family in the more impoverished part of the city), commercialism of the arts (Yurlady is asked by the cynical head of the poetry club to write about her “bleak” neighbourhood, something she’d never normally do), parenting issues (Oscar’s own failure as a father) and, not least, hopes and dreams of getting things right for a change (Oscar seeing the chance to turn Yurlady into that great poet he himself never was/has yet to become). For all his shortcomings, Oscar ultimately is to be rooted for. His stubborn endurance alone should earn him a place alongside that Asunción Silva fellow atop his drawer – or even a notch higher, why not?

A Poet was produced by Ocultimo (Colombia) and Medio de Contención Producciones (Colombia), with co-production by ma.ja.de Fiction (Germany), ZDF Das kleine Fernsehspiel/ARTE (Germany), Momento Film (Sweden) and Film i Väst (Sweden). Its world sales are overseen by Luxbox.