“Un Poeta” Takes on Colombia’s Cultural Establishment
Simón Mesa Soto's prize-winning black comedy exposes the gap between what artists claim to do for the poor and what they actually do.
This article is adapted from AQ’s special report on Mexico's path forward In the 1970s, a collective of Colombian filmmakers invented the portmanteau pornomiseria to describe an enormously popular film genre coming out of Latin America. They were referring to emotionally manipulative movies about poverty that often gained critical and commercial success in European festivals and North American living rooms. These films are typically self-righteous in their purported goal to help raise awareness about and even rectify entrenched social problems, yet they tend to benefit the people...
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