Cinema obsesses, but also stifles Simón Mesa, the director from Antioquia who has become one of the greatest representatives of Colombian cinema. His life is completely crossed by cinema: living with little to bet everything on his films, writing, producing and directing each of them, embracing the solitary cycles of locking himself up to write scripts in his apartment, devoting entire months to filming then going on tour around the world. He had to tame his hobby to prevent it from drowning him.
“I’m very obsessed, I’m stubborn and obstinate. Maybe that’s why I make films. The problem is when you become obsessed with something to the point of making it your life and you forget to enjoy the present. I had to measure this obsession because passions can also stifle.” The director describes this feeling in a poethis second feature film, which received the Special Jury Prize at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in May in the category A certain look and the Horizontes Latinos Prize for best Latin American film, at the San Sebastian International Film Festival.
The paradox is that Mesa, 39, did not want to be a filmmaker, but rather a musician. He fell in love with the guitar at the age of 6, when he and his older brother took music lessons from Arturo, a bolerist from Medellín. “I grew up listening to the rock that my brother loved, playing with my band at our neighborhood social hall, wanting to dedicate myself to that.” His love for cinema came later. Like on a blind date, she fell in love with him without knowing him.
“I was finishing my studies and I didn’t know what to study,” he remembers. He discovered a career in audiovisual communications at the University of Antioquia, combining cinema, sound and photography. “There were a lot of things that seemed interesting to me, even if I didn’t know them. I didn’t come from a family that had much access to culture or art. I was 17 and I had only seen the films that were on television on Sundays. I had never seen cinema as a profession.”
He showed up, was accepted and, hand in hand with his classmates, began cultivating what would become his greatest obsession. “I got lost and I betrayed music a little because I transferred all the artistic sensitivity I had to cinema. I had to learn it, understand it as an adult and that’s where this great love began.
He graduated, won a scholarship and received a master’s degree in directing from the London Film School. For his diploma project, he wrote and produced Leidia 16-minute short film about a young woman’s search for the father of her child. Mesa sent the short film on DVD to the Cannes Film Festival, without imagining that soon after it would win the Palme d’Or for best short film at one of the most important film festivals in the world. “It was a giant shock because it was an academic short film and I was experimenting. Arriving in Cannes was very strange: knowing the city, this dazzling and surreal universe, full of cinema and personalities, so foreign to a person like me, who leads such a normal life in Medellín.”
In addition to the Palme d’Or, Leidi won the Golden Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival (2015). “It was a huge surprise, full of joy, but also shadows: pressure, high expectations and questions about what comes next.”
Then came the short film Motherwhich was also part of the Official Selection of Cannes (2016), and Protectionhis first feature film, which participated in Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival (2021) and won awards in France, the United States, Uruguay and Peru.
After the success, came the doubts. The first of Protection was delayed for over a year due to Covid-19 restrictions. Mesa was in his thirties and had been trying to make a living from cinema for over a decade. He led an austere life, investing almost all of his time and money into making his films a reality, contributing little to his health and retirement, and surviving through teaching. “Art without money is very cruel and to be an artist in Colombia is to live on the edge. Cinema costs time, money and emotional energy. And very often, it gives nothing in return,” he told journalist André Didyme-Dôme.
“When what happened Protection I wondered if it was worth continuing. Spend another five years in another film? Or better, give lessons in complete peace and quiet? » He began to consider the idea of teaching full-time and to seek the stability that cinema refused to grant him. “I thought about it, but the very idea frustrated me more. I have devoted myself for years, and with great obstinacy, to making films. This is what I know how to do. And as long as this momentum is alive, I will continue.
In this experience close to disillusionment and disenchantment, the a poet. The feature film tells the story of Óscar Restrepo, a teacher who survives through teaching and who, after being a promising young poet, faces the weight of having become a marginalized artist, until an unexpected connection occurs with a teenage apprentice. For Mesa, the film embodies his own questions about what it means to make art in Colombia: taking risks without any guarantees, living in instability, taking refuge in teaching, and resisting continuing to create despite everything.
“a poet part of the uncomfortable question: what happens when the dream of art doesn’t come true, but we are still alive? I felt like I had to say it before I gave up. And I took the plunge,” he said. The Hollywood Reporter last September. “In the film, the character is me disguised as a poet,” he says, because, like poetry, making independent films is difficult and achieved through sheer stubbornness. “He is a dreamer and a stubborn man. Nobody makes a living from poetry, it’s crazy to think that you can make a living from it. The same thing happens with cinema. Who can make a living from cinema? Maybe he will find ways, but it’s not easy, the easiest thing is to give up,” he told EL PAÍS..
a poet It continues to garner awards around the world and Mesa continues its marathon tour with the film. In February and March 2026, the film will be in competition at the Goyas and the Oscars. “It’s been an incredible journey: a film that started from my frustrations in making films, ended up reconnecting me with the desire to continue making it.”
The director hopes to soon return to his apartment in Medellín, where he lives alone, near his mother, the quiet and austere life of recent years, which only changes when he releases a film. He doesn’t have much, he says, but the peace of mind of watering his plants, teaching classes twice a week and sitting down to write for months before filming again is enough for him.
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